
Class 



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Copyright^N? 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Tfn tbe Ibour of Silence 



BY JOHN EDGAR McFADYEN, 
B.A.(Oxon), M.A.(Glas.) 

THE DIVINE PURSUIT 



**?- v \ ■ , ■ 



"Devotional books of the high-class to which this 
volume belongs are rare and precious. The author, 
by help of sympathetic insight into the soul of man 
and its satisfaction in the gospel of Christ, has spoken 
words which will be a source of strength and comfort 
to many readers." — The Congregationalist and 
Christian World. 

"By its excellence and its helpfulness it will 
keep its place for many a day among the enduring 
books that minister to the life of the spirit. . . . 
There is indeed beaten gold here, and v,ere such as 
this the result and output of all critical study of the 
Bible, Christianity and the Church would be greatly 
the richer because ot it." — The Westminster. 

"A devotional book of rare excellence. Its beauty 
of diction, its lofty range of spiritual thought, will 
commend it wherever it enters. This little book 
will find its way into many homes, and it will bring 
stimulus to many a discouraged one. It is unpre- 
tentious, and it is none the less welcome because it 
makes no high claim. It meets men where the need 
is greatest, in the stress of life, and bring a message 
of cheer to them there." — The Presbyterian Review. 

*'Each one of the short and crisp chapters of this 
book — there are twenty-four in all — is a homily of 
delicate and true exegesis, all parts harmonious, no 
joints or flexures of obtruding lecture-room or 
lexicon, but all deftly woven into a unique statement, 
i^ which by direct or implied reference, the Scrip- 
tural is exploited to the uses of true devotion and 
pure communion with the will and wisdom and the 
ove ot God." — The Eva?igelist. 

"The. quest, both of man for God and of God for 
man is the general subject of these brief chapters of 
devotional meditation. They breathe an invigorating 
air on the uplands ot spiritual life." — Outlook. 

"The little book is great in its simplicity, sweetness 
and strength. The fruitage of a finely cultured 
spiritual life is here and its wine flows forth in these 
helpful paragraphs." — Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus, D. D. 

i2mo, cloth, gilt top, net, $1.00 



IN THE HOUR 
OF SILENCE 



BY 

John Edgar McFadyen, B.A.(Oxon.)M.A.(Glas.) 

Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, 
Knox College, Toronto. ' 




Chicago New York Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London & Edinburgh 
MCMI I 



COPYRIGHT, 19 


2, 


BY FLEMING 


H. 


REVELL COMPANY 


September 





I THE LIBR, RV OF 
1 ° 


Two Copies Rec 


OCT 14 1903 


Copyright tntry 


CLASS «- XXc. No 


^ iT c ~J 3 


COPY B, 



A 









1r> 



IN SORROW AND IN LOVE 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 

TO THE MEMORY OF 

PROFESSOR ANDREW HALLIDAY DOUGLAS, 

A LOYAL FRIEND, A BRILLIANT AND VERSATILE COLLEAGUE, 

AND A TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR, 

WHO, BY HIS MANIFOLD, CHARM OF MIND AND HEART, 

HIS LOVE OF ALL NOBLE LEARNING, 

HIS NATIVE GENTLENESS AND CHIVALRY, 

HIS PURE AND BEAUTIFUL LIFE, 

AND BY HIS INSPIRING, GENEROUS AND UNSELFISH SERVICE 

DURING HIS TOO BRIEF TENURE OF THE 

CHAIR OF APOLOGETICS IN*' KNOX COLLEGE, TORONTO, 

WON AN ABIDING PLACE 

IN THE AFFECTIONS OF ALL. 



PREFACE 

Like its predecessor, The Divine Pur- 
suit, this little volume is a group of brief 
meditations on some of the things that 
pertain to the spiritual life. The studies 
are brief, because they are meant to be 
suggestive rather than exhaustive. Elab- 
orate discussion does not always illumi- 
nate. The best thing one can do for a 
text is to let it shine in its own light. 

The impulse to these chapters came 
from many quarters, but most powerfully 
and frequently frbm Scripture itself. 
There can be no doubt that the richest 
devotional results are reached by the 
closest and most sympathetic exegetical 
study. In these days of criticism, it is 
well to assure ourselves that the positive 
religious content of Scripture remains not 
only unharmed, but untouched. Its power 
to kindle and inspire, to comfort and 

7 



8 preface 

encourage is the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever. And it is the religious 
teachers duty, as it should be his delight, 
to discover the life which throbs and 
glows in its ancient words, and so to pre- 
sent that life that it shall govern the 
mind, the heart, and the conscience of 
to-day. 

Of these chapters, three — The Balsam 
Vale, Like Them That Dream, and The 
Stranger at the Door — have already ap- 
peared in The Interior; one — The Place of 
Memory — in The Sunday School Times; 
others in The Westminster. To the edi- 
tors of all these magazines I am deeply 
indebted for their courteous permission 
to reprint the chapters referred to. In 
their new setting, may they help to sus- 
tain the hearts of any who are sad or de- 
feated or weary ! 

JOHN E. McFADYEN. 

Toronto, July 9, 1902. 



CONTENTS 



To-Day and Forever 

The Way That Perisheth . 

The Mirror of Opportunity 

The Balsam Vale . 

The Mighty Men 

Misunderstood 

Within Closed Doors 

The Anchor within the Veil 

The Voice from the Shore 

Summer Is Nigh . * . 

The Shining Face . 

A Broad Place 

Like Them That Dream . 

The Sowing and the Sheaves 

Deep Digging 

The Key of Knowledge 

Have Ye Not Read? 

The Things That Matter . 



• 13 


21 


. 29 


39 


• 47 


55 


• 63 


7i 


■ 77 


87 


• 95 


103 


. in 


121 


• 131 


139 


• 147 


157 





PAGE 


The Duty of Content . 


. 165 


The Great Elsewhere 


• 175 


Mindful of Him 


• 183 


The Place of Memory 


191 


The Stranger at the Door . 


. 201 


One Step Enough 


209 



Jesus Gbrist is tbe same sesteroa^ 
ano to»oas ano forever. 



TO-DAY AND FOREVER 

There are times when the frailty of all 
things earthly is borne in upon us with a 
strangely depressing power. In the death 
of a strong man, in the coming of a birth- 
day, in the passing of anpther year, we 
see the inexorable march of time which 
waits for nothing, but treads remorse- 
lessly down all that has ever been lovely 
or dear. The dead have been mourned 
and the mourners have died. The life 
that we loved as our own has vanished 
while we looked tipon it — vanished and 
left us alone with a sense of indescribable 
desolation. Powerless we stand for a 
little upon the bank as the river of time 
rolls on, till one day the bank crumbles 
beneath our feet, and we, too, are borne 
on and on where millions have been 
borne before us, leaving nothing but a 
vanishing memory to those who will soon 

13 



14 Un tbe 1bout of Silence 

themselves be forgotten, and be as though 
they had never been. 

In such a mood how sorrowful must 
the world look to us — an ever-widening 
gulf of buried memories and hopes! 
Time has slain everything. As we look 
back in the quiet hour over a large tract 
of time, how strangely unreal seem many 
of the issues for which men have fought 
and died! The trumpet has sounded; 
and the cannons have roared; and the 
steel has flashed; and thousands have 
gone to a bloody grave. And now it is 
all quiet. The smoke has cleared away 
from many a battle-field; and we see, as 
it were, phantom combatants fighting too 
often for a phantom cause. But now 
they are gone; and the teachers and the 
poets and the prophets are gone; and 
the brave and the fair, the good and the 
true. 

But Jesus Christ is the same, yester- 
day, to-day and forever. He does not go. 
He cannot go. Lo! He is with us all the 
days and all the years to be, and where 
He is, there also shall His people be, im- 



Uo^&as anfc forever is 

mortal with His immortality. Above all 
the wreck and ruin, He stands erect, with 
eternal sunshine upon His face. Time 
cannot lay its blighting hand upon Him. 
History has only shown Him to be more 
beautiful and strong. Every age con- 
firms anew His claim, and compels men 
to wonder and adore Him. To Him they 
bring their shaken faith and shattered 
hopes, and He restores them to quietness 
and confidence. Day by day His silent 
influence falls upon the world with its 
subtle benediction. He faileth not and 
changeth not. Men pass, but He abides, 
and preserves in perfect peace the soul 
that loves Him until that great day. He 
is not one who has had His day and 
ceased to be. No mere memory is He, 
but a living, gracious and abiding Pres- 
ence. 

What He ever was, that He always is; 
and what He was, we know. We look at 
Him upon the hills, speaking His words 
of blessedness to the broken and the pure 
in heart. We watch Him on the lake 
uttering words of life from a boat to the 



16 ifn tbe Ifoour of Silence 

eager crowds upon the shore. We see 
Him, in His own beautiful way, restoring 
the woman that was a sinner to purity 
and God. We listen to Him as He tells 
to outcast people of the unutterable love 
of the good Shepherd, who seeks till He 
finds, and brings the wayward lamb home 
upon His shoulders rejoicing. We listen 
with glad awe as He calls the twelve His 
friends, and assures them that He spake 
those things to them, that in Him they 
might have peace and fulness of joy. 

Such He was then, and He is the same 
to-day and forever. He passed from the 
sight of men to take the place which He 
had won by suffering at the right hand*of 
the Father, and yet in every age men, 
not having seen Him, have loved Him, 
and looked upon Him as the realest of 
realities. One who knew Him not after 
the flesh counted all things but dung, if so 
be he might gain Him and be found in 
Him. Centuries after, another saint said: 
"I would I could serve Thee all the days of 
my life. I would I were able at least for 
one day to do Thee some worthy service. 



Uo*fcag ant> forever 17 

Truly Thou art worthy of all service, of 
all honor, and everlasting praise." In 
very troublous times Samuel Rutherford 
wrote to a friend: "There is none like 
Him. I would not exchange one smile of 
His lovely face with kingdoms." And 
Frances Ridley Havergal, a sweet singer 
of a later day, wrote: "What could we 
do without Him in this lonely world of 
shadows?" 

All the centuries ring with the praises 
of Christ, and He is as real and dear 
to-day as ever. Some men alive to-day 
have heard the sound of His voice as 
surely as did the Syrian crowds on street 
or lake; and some have felt the touch of 
His hand as surely as did the woman 
whose fever left her, when Christ took 
her by the hand. Strong in His fellow- 
ship and all for the love of Him, men 
to-day in China have gone to death in its 
fearfulest forms; for they counted Him 
worthy. He has been to them what He 
was to those who knew Him best — the 
altogether lovely. 

Thus the world is not a silent burial- 



18 Hn tbe Dour of Silence 

ground. It is vocal with the praises of 
Christ. Nor has Time slain everything: it 
has not touched any life that was hid with 
Christ in God. He lives forever; and all 
who have ever loved Him He will lead 
into that glory which fadeth not away. 



Gbe wag of tbe wicfceo perisbetb. 



THE WAY THAT PERISHETH 

Most human lives lead nowhere. Not 
indeed for want of energy, but for want 
of nobleness, concentration, purpose, In 
indifference, if not in sin, we wander over 
our little span of time, for thirty, fifty, 
seventy years, and end where we began, 
with nothing attempted and nothing 
done; or even, it may be, further from 
our real destiny than when we began. 
We have allowed the daily burden to 
crush the soul out of us instead of devel- 
oping our power to bear it. Opportuni- 
ties have been neglected because they 
Vere not welcomed as gifts: powers have 
been wasted on idle or unhallowed things: 
life has not been felt to be a march 
towards eternity. As we walk aimlessly 
across its waterless plains, we see no city 
set upon a distant hill; and we cannot 
hope to reach what we do not see, or at 



22 nn tbe 1bour of Silence 

least struggle towards in faith. So on and 
on we go, or rather round and round, with 
nothing to guide us but our own caprice, 
and nothing to sustain us but the empty 
laughter of comrades as foolish as our- 
selves. And one day we have to call a 
halt. The sun sets and we have to face 
the terrors of the long night alone. But 
our path was zigzag, and such as it was, it 
is lost in the sands. We did not guide 
our steps by the sun when he was shining 
in the heavens, and how shall we know 
our way when the thick night has come on? 
Only the straight line is infinite. The 
only way which leads unerringly from this 
life to the life everlasting, is the straight 
way, the way of the upright. In the 
empty, frivolous, careless life there is 
nothing eternal, any more than in the 
wicked life, for it has nothing to do with 
that which is alone eternal, even God. 
"Thou shalt diligently consider his place, 
and he shall not be." "The way of the 
wicked perishes." You see no more of it. 
It dies, as die the caravan tracks in the 
desert. 



Ube TKIlas Ubat perisbetb 23 

But do we feel as Jesus did the terrible 
pathos of the lives that lead nowhere? To 
Him such a life was not merely a mis- 
take, it was a tragedy. The crowds which 
sauntered thoughtlessly along the broad 
way, were not merely going nowhere, 
they were moving to destruction. The 
broad way was the w r ay of ease and com- 
fort, on which a man had room to move 
as he pleased without challenge, restraint 
or responsibility: but the end of that way 
was ruin. Ruin to the physical strength 
which self-indulgence was daily under- 
mining: ruin to the affections which 
should have opened and expanded like 
the bud, but w T hich a too fierce or too 
selfish passion had withered: ruin to the 
powers which an unselfish love might 
have wakened into beneficent activity: 
ruin to the hopes which had brightened 
the beginning of life's way: ruin to the 
faith which means peace. So the way of 
the wicked does not merely die out upon 
the sand; it plunges over the precipice of 
destruction, and hurls to their ruin those 
who are simple enough to travel along it. 



24 IFn tbe Ifoour of Silence 

It is hard to avoid a way so pleasantly 
broad, especially as it is the popular way, 
and has abundance of good fellowship to 
offer: for many there be that go in at the 
gate that opens on to it. And the gate is 
wide as the way is broad. You will not 
have to leave anything behind when you 
pass through it. Nothing has to be paid, 
no sacrifice made, no darling sin aban- 
doned. All that you love you may easily 
take with you through this spacious gate: 
your vanity and your vice. But the way 
leadeth in the end to destruction. 

Sin of every kind spells defeat and ex- 
tinction. Trace its progress in your own 
heart — the lust for pleasure or gold or 
honor — and mark how it has ruined all 
that was best in you. Watch how those 
who openly or secretly defy the great 
laws written in every human heart, have 
often to hide their heads in poverty or 
loneliness or shame. See how the nations 
which have given themselves over to the 
lusts of the flesh have gone down before 
the inexorable laws which they defied. 
Before our eyes there are nations dying 



Ube Mas ITbat iPerisbetb 25 

of their "centuries of folly, noise and sin." 
And shall we be found to fight against 
God? Surely the way of transgressors is 
hard; for all the laws of God's world are 
against them. To connect ourselves con- 
sciously with evil is to evoke a Nemesis 
whose stroke, be it swift or slow, nothing 
but the all-pitiful grace of God can stay. 
Narrow is the way that leadeth unto 
life, and it is entered by t a strait gate 
through which you cannot press without 
leaving much that is dear behind you: 
friends, popularity, delights, ambitions. 
A lonely way it is at times: you may walk 
on it for days without meeting anybody, 
for "few they be that find it." But if it is 
lonely, it is sure: it*will lead you through 
many a valley and over many a hill, but 
never to destruction. Every struggle with 
the sin that besets, every aspiration after 
a to-morrow that shall find us better than 
to-day, every longing after God, every 
effort to help the needy and cheer the 
faint or falling is a revelation in us of the 
will of God, and brings us further on the 
everlasting way. The Lord loveth the 



26 trn tbe 1bour of Silence 

way of the righteous, and that is a guar- 
antee of its permanence. So they shall 
walk and not faint, not even in the valley 
of the shadow, for they shall pass through 
it into the brightness of His presence. 
No way is eternal but the way to God, 
and "I," said Christ, "am the Way." The 
feet may bleed that tread the path He 
trod, for it is the way of the Holy Cross. 
But it leads to peace and light and God. 
Therefore 

Search me, O God, and know my heart: 
Try me, and know my thoughts: 

And see if there be in me any way of grief, 
And lead me in the way everlasting. 



&V tbeir fruits $e sball ftnow tbem. 



THE MIRROR OF OPPORTUNITY 

Next to knowing God, the highest task 
of man is to know himself. For self- 
knowledge is the condition of all pro- 
gress, and it is for progress that we are 
sent into the world; or in the words of 
the apostle, "to press on toward the goal 
unto the prize of the high calling of God 
in Christ Jesus." If to-morrow is to find 
us nearer that goal than to-day, then we 
must know what we are and where we 
stand to-day. 

For, in the most inexorable way, what 

we are determines what we shall be: our 

character is the prophecy of our destiny. 

As earnestly, therefore, as we would fear 

to be found reprobate at the last, as 

eagerly as we would wish to take our 

place in the ranks of the redeemed 

around the throne of God, so earnestly 

and so eagerly do we need to examine 

29 



30 Un tbe 1bour of Silence 

ourselves and learn what manner of men 
we are. 

Now this is not easy. Character is a 
thing of infinite complexity. The sub- 
tlest influences are every day at work 
upon us, changing us imperceptibly from 
the men we were to the men we shall be 
when we die; and few have the skill to 
trace those influences, and to analyze the 
motives which prompt them to this, and 
deter them from that; with the result that 
we are often strangers to ourselves, and 
our character is as an undiscovered coun- 
try. Then comes the deadliest of all 
temptations — for it puts the soul to sleep 
— the temptation to accept the world's 
estimate of us; foolishly happy, if a 
world which knows us not approve of us, 
and foolishly sorrowful, if that world con- 
demn us. 

But whatever others may think of us, 
we are ultimately only what we are. Our 
deepest concern is to know that, to be 
acquainted with the quality of our inner 
life. In whatever else we are deceived, 
we must not allow ourselves to be de- 



Ube /IDirror of Opportunity 31 

ceived in that. We must discover our- 
selves, searching relentlessly till we find 
what we are, when stripped of all the 
accidents of reputation and office, and 
how we look in the sight of Almighty God. 
That is not easy, but it is not impossi- 
ble; for the tree is known by its fruits. 
This great word of Christ's we are fond 
of applying to the lives of others; but it 
tests our own life as much as it tests 
another man's. We may not be able to 
estimate our character as a whole, but by 
its fruits we may know it. Every day is 
crowded with unerring witnesses to the 
nature and direction of our inner life. 
We cannot open our lips or stretch out 
our hand, we cannot smile or frown or 
sigh, without revealing the invisible spirit 
within us. In the words and deeds which 
every living man brings into being every 
day, his spirit takes to itself an awful and 
irretrievable reality. In that world of his 
own creation he may see himself reflected 
with a fidelity which would often make 
him shudder, did he but look himself 
frankly in the face. 



32 1fn tbe Tbour of Silence 

The events of our lives are not mere- 
ly things that happen; on the one hand, 
they are revelations of the discipline 
through which God is searching and 
refining us; and on the other, our atti- 
tude to them yields us a revelation of 
ourselves. They are as a mirror, into 
which he who steadily looks cannot fail 
to find his own image reflected. Under 
a given provocation, one man will hold 
his peace; another will break forth into 
hot and unconsidered words. Both men 
stand as by a flash revealed. The situa- 
tion has given them their opportunity to 
disclose themselves; nay, more, it has 
compelled them to disclose themselves. 
It was a challenge. They could not be 
where they were without showing what 
manner of men they were. The provoca- 
tion did not of itself make the one man 
angry; it found him angry, it found him 
the slave of momentary passion. Thus 
the spirit is manifested. The veil which 
hid the real men from us has been rolled 
back. They have revealed their charac- 
ter to the world, but not less to them- 



Gbe /RMrror of ©pportunits 33 

selves; and for the man of the impatient 
and hasty word, if he but saw himself as 
others see him, that moment might be a 
blessed crisis in his life — the beginning of 
a new career of self-control. 

So every situation in which a man may 
be — the most commonplace as well as the 
most crucial — compels him to disclose 
himself. Whether he does something or 
nothing, he reveals himself. Action or 
inactivity, silence or speech — it is all one 
eloquent, impartial, ceaseless testimony 
to the quality of his spirit. Thus the 
measure of a man is his response to 
opportunity. As he acts, so is he. Any 
moment he may see himself; especially in 
those moments when he is taken off his 
guard, and thus compelled to act in char- 
acter. Did we ever, in some moment of 
temper, raise our hand against one whom 
we loved? Then that vision of the 
uplifted hand should haunt us, till it has 
shamed, rebuked, chastened us; for it is a 
revelation of our inmost spirit, of the 
anger which, in its essence, is as tragic as 
murder — of the passion which deserves 



34 Hn tbe 1bour of Silence 

the criminal's doom. In such a moment, 
our dark self stands forth with awful 
clearness, as if lit with a sudden lightning 
flash. It is ours to look and learn. 
Those are precious, though bitter, mo- 
ments, to one who is honestly anxious to 
know himself. They enable us to look 
ourselves in the face, and to grow, 
through pain and repentance, into an- 
other and a fairer life. 

We may also learn to measure our 
moral worth by watching how we behave, 
when the restraints, which hedge our 
ordinary life about, are withdrawn. With 
what a shock of surprise do we discover 
flow lax good men can be on holiday! 
They indulge themselves in ways that at 
home they would hardly consider legiti- 
mate. They neglect duties which at 
home they seem to regard as peremptory. 
Their indifference to the things of God is 
in painful contrast to their profession and 
performances at home. The holiday has 
given them their chance to display their 
true self, and there they stand revealed 
in all the nakedness of their spiritual life. 

In general, travel affords men a fine 



Ube fliMrror of ©pportunttp 35 

opportunity to study themselves. The 
presence of other standards and often 
lower ideals tests the strength of principle 
and the reality of faith. The young man 
in the heart of a foreign city, and a 
stranger to all but the God above him, is 
drawn, perchance, by the subtle spell of 
pleasures which he would not count inno- 
cent at home. Then he learns, as he 
never knew before, how pitiful a figure he 
really is. The temptation has revealed 
him to himself. And woe to such an one 
who does not fear, with an exceeding 
fear, the weakness which he now must 
own! Well for him if, in such an hour, he 
remember his mother's God! 

By looking upon* what we have done, 
by reflecting upon what we have said, by 
watching ourselves in excited or critical 
moments, we get glimpses of that strange, 
unseen spirit of ours, from which all our 
words and deeds proceed. Little by little, 
we learn to know ourselves. We learn to 
see ourselves, not only as others see us — 
which is but a poor thing after all— but, 
in some faint measure, as we are, in His 
most holy sight. 



Gbrougb tbe valleg of JSaca. 



THE BALSAM VALE 

Was ever city in all this world loved 
like Jerusalem? Men who had never seen 
it thought of it as home; and they would 
enter upon long and perilous ways, to 
gladden their hearts by the sight of it, 
and to rekindle their faith by standing 
within its gates. That city was the home 
of their hearts, because in some strange, 
high sense it was the earthly home of 
their God. Once, in a time of awful 
peril, He had defended it with His 
unseen army; and 4 there, too, when the 
tides of heathenism were sweeping up 
almost to its walls, He was worshipped 
by later ages with an exuberant and 
strenuous devotion. So many an exiled 
heart was glad, when it heard the call to 
go to the house of the Lord. From the 
far lands those pilgrims came to the hill- 
girt city, which seemed to incarnate for 

39 



40 An tbe 1bour of Silence 

them the ancient purpose of their God. 
They came as sight-seers; but the sight 
they yearned to see was the living God in 
Zion. And oh! the thrill of it, as, spent 
with the weary way, they first caught 
sight of the walls and pinnacles. 

My soul yearned, yea pined, 

For the courts of Jehovah. 
But now my heart and my flesh send up a 
ringing cry 

Unto the living God — 

a cry which will surely wake a glad 
response in our own hearts, if we watch 
the dry and desolate way by which 
they have come. For it is no light thing 
— the pilgrim way. It leads across ground 
that is scorched by the cruel sun; there 
alone can the baca or balsam tree grow. 
Yes, the pilgrim way lies through the bal- 
sam vale, whose other name is the vale of 
tears. But in the end they are to look 
upon the face of their own great God; and 
they would surely reckon that all the 
sufferings and perils of the way were not 
worthy to be compared with the glory 
that should crown it. And if our worship 



Ube Balsam IDale 41 

brings us less of joy than theirs, it maybe 
because it has cost us less of pain. There 
is no ringing shout, because there has been 
no balsam vale. May those thrilling pil- 
grim songs do their perfect work upon us 
by kindling within us a sense of the glory 
and the joy of worship! 

How the pilgrims envied the priests, 
whose duty was to remain forever within 
the solemn house of God! Thrice blessed 
— they cry — are they who dwell in Thy 
house, and sing Thee everlasting praise. 
Nay — answer the priests — there is a 
higher blessedness than that, even the pil- 
grim bliss which is sustained by continu- 
ous and glad surprises; the pilgrim faith 
which is never allowed to degenerate into 
monotony, but is ever kept alert by new 
sights and new victories, as it marches on 
from hill to hill, from strength to 
strength. The glory of God is revealed 
in the valley even more than in the tem- 
ple: for He turns its dry places into wells 
of living water. Thrice blessed is the 
man — be he pilgrim in the valley or priest 
in the temple — who puts his trust in Thee. 



42 Un tbe Toour of Silence 

How lovely is Thy habitation, espe- 
cially to men whose home is among "the 
tents of ungodliness," for this is the dark 
background against which stand the clear 
figures of the pilgrim band. The accident 
of birth or circumstance may have thrown 
them there, but they are deep-hearted 
men whom such company cannot satisfy. 
They cannot live all their lives there. 
They must go to the house of their God 
and live there, though but for a day. 
The inspiration of that day will help to 
carry them across years of temptation 
from the men who dwell in the tents of 
wickedness. Worship is to them more 
than gorgeous ceremony. Through it 
comes deliverance from evil. And back 
through the valley they go again, not 
only glad, but strong. They have seen 
the Lord. 

The pilgrim life is always the same. 
To-day, as yesterday, the soul that would 
be true to all that is best, needs the sup- 
port of public worship. Too well we know 
how powerful are the assaults that can be 
led from the tents of wickedness, and how 



Ube Balsam Dale 43 

often our armour is pierced. So one day 
in seven, in company with other strug- 
gling souls, we meet the Lord of Hosts, 
the God of the daily battle, our sun and 
shield. In the church of Christ, within 
the communion of the saints, pledged as 
they are to fight the good fight, our moral 
nature is braced again, and we taste once 
more the assurance of victory. For the 
moment, the church is home — home of 
our deepest heart, like a bird's nest, a soft 
and gentle thing, where God's Israel, like 
a mother bird, may lay down her young 
and never fear. 

Every week is as a pilgrimage through 
the balsam vale; and as we emerge and 
behold the holy day and the holy city, 
well may we send up a ringing shout of joy. 
But is all life, too, not just such a pilgrim- 
age? On we go, from weakness to weak- 
ness, or from strength to strength, 
according as we care little or much for 
the heavenly Jerusalem. But whether in 
weakness or in strength, it is often through 
a valley of tears. The deepest hearts 
have not felt like singing all the time. 



44 Un tbe 1bour of Silence 

Often, very often, it has been the tear- 
stained face that has been turned up in 
mute appeal or prayer to God. But 
through the tears the eye of faith will 
sometimes see the landscape transfigured, 
and fountains welling up in the balsam 
vale. The glory of the heavenly city 
sheds back a gentle light on all the way 
thereto. To the soul that yearns for the 
unclouded vision of God, the dangers and 
privations of the earthly pilgrimage will 
be transformed into blessings that break 
upon her barren way as the rain from 
heaven. Then, when the way is over, in 
the presence of the living God, the pil- 
grim will lift up his glad song, as he 
stands within those courts, which neither 
war nor storm can shatter. 

The peace of all the faithful, 
The calm of all the blest, 

Inviolate, unvaried, 

Divinest, sweetest, best. 



/ffi>S sins are migbtier tban I. 



THE MIGHTY MEN 

"My sins," said the Psalmist, "are 
mightier than I," and his words are the 
words of a man to whom life meant bat- 
tle. Those sins of his are hideously real. 
Like mighty men, they beset him hourly 
behind and before, and he has to face and 
fight them as he values his life. In his 
most innocent and unguarded moments, 
their cruel faces glare in upon him. He 
knows them well. Often and often they 
had grappled with him and thrown him — 
thrown him upon his knees; and there, 
before the Hearer of prayer, unto whom 
all flesh may come when the battle is sore, 
he renews his strength, and finds that 
there is One stronger than the strong 
men who are too much for him — even He 
who establishes the mountains by His 
strength, and is girt about with might, and 
whose presence means victory and peace. 

This was his battle, and it is ours. It 

47 



48 1Fn tbe 1bour of Silence 

is the awful privilege of every man to 
fight his lonely fight against the mighty 
men of his own creation. There they are; 
within us, and yet, it would almost seem, 
without us, ringing us round and defying 
us to break through them into the broad 
place where there is liberty. They are 
ours, and yet they strangely seem to have 
taken to themselves an independent per- 
sonality. The} 7 say to us mockingly, "It 
is thou that hast made us, and not we 
ourselves"; yet, after we have made them, 
they learn to bind us and lead us whither- 
soever the} 7 will, unless with prayer and 
courage we resist them. Ever}' tempta- 
tion unresisted, every opportunity unem- 
braced, has the mysterious power of 
peopling our world with enemies who too 
surely go with us where we go, and dwell 
with us where we dwell. Stronger and 
stronger they grow, and we know it not, 
until one day they rise up to our amaze- 
ment and confront us as the mighty men 
who are now too strong for us, and who 
are imperilling our soul's salvation and 
peace. 



Ube ADiQbts /IDen 49 

Every man knows his own mighty men 
best: pride, apathy, discontent, lust, greed, 
envy. But not every man knows what it 
is to wrestle with them. What a sad 
facility most of us possess for ignoring the 
eternal issues of this conflict, and the fear- 
ful odds that are pitted against us! We 
take life for a fair, when it was meant to 
be a battle. We do not agonize, as Christ 
bade us, to enter in at the strait gate. 
There is indeed many a soul in which a 
struggle long and sore is waging, that 
the world knows nothing of. There is 
many a fall and many a triumph which is 
hidden from all but God. But how much 
of strain is there in the ordinary Christian 
life? Are we vexed by our struggle with 
sin as the poor are vexed by their pov- 
erty? Or is the Christian world to-day 
much as it was in William Law's time, 
when even the lives of the better sort of 
people were so contrary to that strenuous 
temper without which religion is but a 
name? If it be so — and let every man 
judge himself as in the sight of God — if 
"we have not that perfection which our 



50 fin tbe Ifoour of Silence 

present state of grace makes us capable 
of," it is, as Law says, "because we do not 
so much as intend to have it." And who 
that has not the intention, can call him- 
self Christ's? In the history of the 
church it has been the greatest souls that 
have felt most overwhelmingly the fierce- 
ness of the struggle with sin; men like 
Bunyan, Augustine, Paul. "Oh wretched 
man that I am!" Life was a grim thing 
for the man out of whose heart that cry 
was wrung, as it will always be for all who 
echo it sincerely. 

When the day is done, the great ques- 
tion for us all is not the amount of our 
work, but the quality of our struggle. Were 
we watching, as well as working? Was our 
soul well knit? Did we grapple with the 
mighty men? Were we wounded? Did 
we triumph? Or had we all the day no 
sense of battle, and no longing for vic- 
tory? The most tragic loss that can befall 
any man in this world is the loss of the 
desire to win. Every experience, even 
the simplest, contains in it the elements of 
contest and the possibility of victory. It 



Zhc /llMsbts /IDen s 1 

may be but the speaking of a word or the 
partaking of a meal: we come through it 
either triumphant or defeated. In the 
test which it brought, we behaved like a 
good soldier of Jesus Christ, or we did 
not. And if this be life, is not our 
utmost vigilance necessary evermore? 
We need, like the warriors of old, to 

Carve at the meal with gloves of steel, 
And drink the red wine through the helmet 
barred. 

We need that, and more — even a con- 
sciousness of a Power above us, not our- 
selves, that makes for victory: or rather 
not a power only, but a Presence. Over 
against the mighty men who were too 
strong for him, the Psalmist saw Another 
who was stronger still; and it is our 
blessed privilege to see Him still more 
clearly, even as Jesus, who is not only 
leader, but comrade and brother. He 
knew a sorer fight than we. He was with 
wild beasts in the wilderness, and forty 
days He was assailed with temptations 
subtler and keener than we can know; 



52 Un tbe 1bour of Silence 

but He left His wilderness with triumph 
shining from His face. Let us, then, but 
bring this Victor into our battle; and, 
comforted by His fellowship and strength- 
ened by His mighty power, we may face 
the mightiest men that can assail with the 
sure hope of victory. 



TKHbetber men ju&oe well of tbee, or 
ill, tbou art not otber tban tb^self. 



MISUNDERSTOOD 

There is a loneliness familiar to all 
whose loved ones have passed irrevocably 
to another world: it is the loneliness of 
bereavement. And there is another lone- 
liness — to some more weird and awful — 
the loneliness of being misunderstood. 
When we are judged by those who do not 
know us, when our kindness is regarded 
as the calculation of policy, when our 
speech or our silence is believed to be the 
veil behind which we hide our real opin- 
ion, when our motives are read in the 
light of malice or suspicion; it is then 
that the heart knoweth its own bitterness. 
There are men and women about us, yet 
our world is desolate. The love for 
which we had looked is burnt out of it by 
the cruel fires of uncharitable judgment. 
Life seems a dreary waste; it is as if there 
were no one left but ourselves and God. 
Yet the discipline of being misunderstood 

55 



56 lfn tbe 1bour of Silence 

may work a blessed and fruitful work 
upon us, if it drive us from the shallow 
judgments of men to the great and mer- 
ciful heart of God. 

Who has not looked with a shock of 
surprise upon the analysis of his motives 
by another? He listens to his well-meant 
words as they are scrutinized by the cun- 
ning or the prejudice of another mind. 
He looks at his actions as they are inter- 
preted by another who lacks that love, 
sympathy, insight, imagination — call it 
what you will — without which no inter- 
pretation of another mind or spirit is pos- 
sible. He listens and he looks with pain. 
For the figure with which he is con- 
fronted is not his own. The criticism 
which should have revealed him to him- 
self, he knows in his heart to be a travesty 
—false where it is not cruel. Like a bad 
mirror, it has distorted the image it was 
meant to reflect. 

When will men learn that no act and 
no word, no! nor a million acts or words 
can exhaustively represent the spirit 
whose expression they are? Beneath and 



/IDisun&erstooD 57 

behind all the manifold activities through 
which the world learns to know us and 
we learn to know ourselves, is that infinite 
spirit of ours, which, just because it is 
infinite and because it is spirit, can never 
adequately express itself in material form. 
It cannot make to itself any graven image 
which will do it justice. And therein lies 
the shame, the atrocity of unconsidered 
and unsympathetic judgment. Who can 
enter into the counsels of another? 
There is so much that we feel and must 
leave unsaid; so much that we divine, but 
have no skill to utter. There is no act 
into which we can pour all our character, 
no deed which suggests to an outsider the 
infinite complexity* of motive and circum- 
stance which determined it. Every per- 
sonality is like a vast harborless island. 
It is difficult to effect a landing upon it; 
and when at any point you land, you have 
done no more than land; the ground has 
all to be traversed and explored. Shall 
anyone then harshly judge the intricacies 
of another mind or character, when he 
does not fully understand his own? 



58 Un tbe Tfoour of Silence 

Other men do not know the limitations 
under which we work. Restrictions have 
been imposed upon us, or we may have 
imposed them upon ourselves. The world 
does not know of them; yet its ignorance 
does not deter it from expressing a judg- 
ment which may bring a flush of indigna- 
tion or a smile of pain across the face of 
the man whom its judgment has wronged. 
Pain there may be, but indignation there 
should be none, if only we have learned to 
commit our way unto the Lord. However 
high may be the seat of those who judge 
us, there is One that is higher than they. 

Much of the pain that is caused by 
misunderstanding might be avoided, if 
men were more generous in their appreci- 
ation of each others standpoints. The 
man at the foot of the hill need have no 
quarrel with the man who has reached its 
summit. It is for each to enjoy, without 
envy or recrimination, as much of the 
landscape as he can. There is one glory 
of the mountain and another of the val- 
ley; and let me not denounce the wider 
vision of another, till — perhaps with toil 



/IDfsunDetstooD 59 

and pain — I, too, have climbed the steeps 
and taken my place beside him. Then, 
perhaps, with his vista before me, my 
mood will change; and if not, I shall at 
least know him to be my brother. 

Hardly a month passes without bring- 
ing some reminder of the sheer impossi- 
bility of judging another fairly. How 
often, for example, do we find a man's 
generosity measured by the amount of his 
subscription to charitable causes! But 
who knows what another may have given, 
whose name appears in no subscription- 
list, but whose gift is written in the books 
of heaven? There is more in even the 
least complicated character than we have 
eyes to see. Perhaps it is a child whom 
his father thought wild and headstrong. 
He sees in him little of the tenderness of 
other children, and it is hard to win from 
him any proof of affection. Then his 
mother dies. And one day, long after, 
when he thinks he is alone, his father 
comes upon him on bended knee, sobbing 
before his mothers portrait. Ah! the 
father misread his boy; the mother whom 



60 iFn tbe Ifoour of Stlence 

he has lost knew him better. In times 
when your heart was sore, have you never 
been comforted with the comfort of a 
glad surprise? Some one whom you had 
thought to be rough and careless looked 
into your eyes with a silent, piercing sym- 
pathy, took your hand with a grip that 
revived your faith and hope, or with his 
own rough hand laid a flower upon the 
grave. 

There are two consolations of which 
the victim of misunderstanding need 
never suffer himself to be robbed: his 
honour and his God. Opinion changes, 
the world passes. But God abides; He 
never faileth. And again, no pressure of 
misunderstanding can essentially affect the 
facts of our case. We are what we are, 
not what we are said to be; and whatever 
others may say, he that was worthy will 
be worthy still. In the words of one who 
knew the human heart as few have known 
it: "Let not thy peace depend upon the 
tongues of men; for whether they judge 
well of thee, or ill, thou art not on that 
account other than thyself." 



Enter into tbs cbamber ano sbut tbs 
ooor. 



WITHIN CLOSED DOORS 

When Christ told His disciples to enter 
into their inner chamber and shut the 
door, He was not so much urging them to 
a virtue as warning them against a vice — 
against the vice of hypocrisy in the deep 
things of religion. The religion of that 
day was fond of parading itself in the 
synagogues and on the streets: and where 
two or three are gathered together, there 
is always the temptation to hypocrisy. 
The presence of other men is a danger as 
well as an inspiration; and if we would 
know what manner of religious men we 
are, we have but to ask ourselves how 
much and how often we care to be in the 
inner chamber, when the door is shut. 
So far from courting the public gaze, we 
must enter upon the offices of devotion — 
Christ seems to say — almost as if we were 
doing a guilty thing, and afraid lest some 
one see and speak of us. 

63 



64 Hn tbe Ibour of Silence 

The temptation to hypocrisy, at least 
in its grosser forms, vanishes within the 
closed doors of the inner chamber. 
There we can afford to be fair with our- 
selves: and there we can hold sweet con- 
verse with the Father. But note: the 
door must be shut. There is something 
very touching in that earnest word of 
Christ: "Enter into thine inner chamber, 
and having shttt thy door, pray." As well 
not pray at all as pray with the door 
open; for the noises of the world will 
enter in and drown the music of the 
Father's voice, and we need to be where 
we can hear nothing but the silence and 
the beating of the Eternal Heart. It is in 
moments like these — when other interests 
stand without, knocking it may be, but 
unanswered, and when the servant kneels 
in the presence of his Lord — it is then 
that he grasps the great realities, and 
convinces himself again of what, when he 
opens the door and crosses the threshold, 
he so easily forgets — that the things which 
are seen are temporal, and the things 
which are not seen are eternal, 



Witbin Closed Boors 6; 

We hear to-day that the middle wall 
of partition between the sacred and the 
secular has been broken down, that all is 
sacred to the man of consecrated vision. 
That may be so: that is so. Yet there is 
an inner chamber and a world outside; 
and there are times when we must leave 
the one and enter the other, and deliber- 
ately shut the door. For we need to see 
the Father, and tell Him how we fared by 
the way, and where we fell and how sorry 
we were. 

We must see Him alone, and we must 
give others, too, the chance of seeing 
Him alone. It is nothing less than cruel 
to follow one into his retreat, when he 
has closed the door. How often, out of a 
mistaken affection, do we rob our dear 
ones of the quiet moments they so sorely 
need! The unspoken tragedy of many a 
mother s life is that her children thrust 
their fellowship upon her in the brief 
moments, all too few, when she seeks 
to rest her fretted heart in soothing 
thoughts of God and His eternity. 

In the struggle without, we lose our- 



66 Hn tbe 1bout of Silence 

selves: in the inner chamber we. find 
ourselves again, and in its helpful silence 
we brace ourselves for the warfare which 
too surely awaits us when we leave. For 
leave we must. We all sustain relations 
to our fellows; it is in a world of living 
men and women that our work has to be 
done. It was indeed one of the saintliest 
of men who said that the greatest saints 
were wont to avoid human converse 
where they could. We would not say 
that to-day. We cannot forget that the 
greatest Saint of all went about among 
men continually. But though the cloister 
cannot be the whole of life, it must still 
be part of it. On the eve of any great 
crisis, the Gospels always reveal Christ in 
some desert place apart. As one has 
said, He stepped back a pace or two, like 
some runner about to take a great leap. 
Yet we often take our most daring leaps 
in life without stepping back, without 
even looking up or across or to anything 
but our feet. 

Not only when we are tempted to 
make our religion a pretence by dragging 



THIiitbin Close& Boors 67 

it into the glare of publicity, but in some 
moment every day, either when its work 
is done or as the spirit moves us, let the 
words of Christ come back upon us: 
"Enter into thine inner chamber and hav- 
ing shut the door, pray." Let us close it 
resolutely in the face of all that makes 
prayer impossible — the passions, the ambi- 
tions, the affections, the interests which 
would contend for the place of honour on 
the right hand and on the left of the 
God who sits throned within. For if we 
do not close the door, and learn to be 
familiar with our deeper selves and with 
the God who besets us behind and before, 
we shall find that we are closing upon 
ourselves slowly, but surely, another door, 
even the door of the kingdom of heaven. 
When the Bridegroom comes, and they 
that are ready go in with Him to the mar- 
riage, we may find that for us the door is 
shut. 



Hn ancbor of tbe soul, botb sure ano 
steaofast. 



THE ANCHOR WITHIN THE VEIL 

As you journey across the often 
troubled and always treacherous sea of 
life, has it never happened to you to 
doubt whether it be not a shoreless sea, 
which will one day cruelly devour you 
and yours, and leave not a trace behind? 
Has it never happened to you to grow 
weary and doubtful, as you strained your 
eyes towards some coast land which never 
rose, not even in shadowy outline, out of 
the waters, to bless your waiting heart? 
Has it never seemed as if your life would 
drift and drift, but never into the haven 
where it would be? You lifted up your 
eyes for the welcome summit of a distant 
hill, but they rested only on towering bil- 
lows. You would fain cast anchor, and 
feel sure; but the bottom is beyond your 
sounding. 

It is this lack of sureness and satisfac- 
tion about earthly things that constitutes 
the opportunity of the religious man. 

71 



72 1fn tbe 1bour of Silence 

May there not be a smiling land some- 
where beyond, though he should never 
see it? May he not even feel very sure 
that there is such a land, and see in im- 
agination the wondrous light upon its 
hills, and on its shores the haven within 
which he will have rest forevermore? 
He may. For all good men who trust in 
Christ have an anchor both sure and 
steadfast, which steadies in the wildest 
storm; but it is an anchor fixed in the 
world beyond, "entering into that within 
the veil." 

Therein lies the paradox of the voyage 
of life, that there is no land in which our 
anchor may grip, unless to the man who 
believes in it. The anchor is an anchor 
of hope, and the land is within the veil. 
Metaphor leaps over metaphor in the 
writers desire to interpret the strange 
power of hope to give reality to the 
unseen. A divine dissatisfaction urges us 
on to lay brave hands upon the future, 
and bring its beautiful and finished work 
into the broken and disheartened present. 
Here we are in the earthly forecourts; 



^be Bncbor witbin tbe Veil n 

not far away — only a step for some of us 
— is the heavenly sanctuary. But there is 
a veil between, through which only Christ 
and hope have penetrated. Not the 
keenest mortal eye can see the beauty 
that lies behind the veil. No man hath 
seen it at any time. He could not see it 
and live. He cannot see it till he die. 
And yet to the eye of hope it is as real as 
any of the earthly sights which bring 
tears. It is more real than they. For it is 
eternal, and they are only for a little while. 

Within the veil stands One we love, a 
Brother, touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities, because tempted and tried like 
as we; a Brother who is also an high 
priest, making intercession for us contin- 
ually. He entered as Forerunner, and 
we, whom He is not ashamed to call His 
brethren, are pledged to run after, as He 
has run before, drawing us with cords of 
love; and we too like Him shall surely 
enter in when the Lord shall call us. 

Nay, but are we not already entered 
in? For the bold hand of hope can rend 
the veil, and let the quiet splendour of 



74 An tbe UDour ot Silence 

the world beyond fall upon the life that 
now is, and gild it with the glories of eter- 
nity. "Hope," in the beautiful words of 
an old Greek father, "entereth within the 
heavens, and maketh us already to dwell 
among the things that are promised, even 
while we are yet here below, and have 
not yet attained. So mighty is her power 
that she turns dwellers on the earth into 
dwellers in the heavens." 

There is a power which can give sub- 
stance to things hoped for, and this power 
receives its highest confirmation in the 
sight of the risen Christ, who entered into 
the holiest through a new and living way. 
With the Easter light in our eyes, and 
the Easter hope in our hearts, faith all 
but melts into sight, and even on earth 
we may already have a foretaste of the 
joy of being with our Forerunner in our 
Father's house. Why then stand trem- 
bling and despondent in the outer courts, 
when the hope that is ours through Christ 
may carry us within the veil? 

Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, 
wherefore standest thou without? 



THUben tbe morning was breaking, 
Jesus stooo upon tbe sbore. 



THE VOICE FROM THE SHORE 

One day, after the sun had set, seven 
fishermen pushed out from the shore. 
Look at them well, for no common men 
are they: Peter the bold, Thomas the 
questioner, Nathanael the guileless, two 
sons of thunder, and two others — apt 
types of the varied gifts and powers 
through which the kingdom is to come. 
The history of the world is hanging upon 
what these men will do. They have 
companied with Jesus. They have seen 
visions; they are dreaming dreams. But 
as yet they are only fishermen; for their 
hour is not yet come. 

All that night they catch nothing. 
The night melts into' the early morning, 
and then, in the solemn break of dawn, 
Jesus stood upon the shore. In upon 
their failure came this heavenly presence, 
and stood where they could all see Him 

77 



78 Hn tbe 1bour of Silence 

— for they were near th s e shore — and their 
faces might, we think, have lit with joy, 
as they forgot their fish, and steered to 
where the Master stood. But no! The 
disciples knew not that it was Jesus. 
Was He, then, so changed? If changed, 
He was, at any rate, not arrayed in robes 
of dazzling glory; for they mistook Him 
for a common man, anxious to buy their 
fish. He comes to His weary disciples as 
a man and a brother, and they know Him 
not. It disappoints, it vexes us. 

"Children/' or "lads," He says, "have 
ye caught anything?" — for that is the 
meaning of His words; and sadly enough 
they answer, "No"; not "No, Master," or 
"No, Lord"; for they do not yet know 
that it is the Lord. They had toiled all 
the sleepless night, and had caught noth- 
ing, not even a glimpse of the real import 
of this Stranger upon the shore. "Cast 
your nets, then," said the Stranger, "to 
the right side of the ship, and )-e shall 
find." They obeyed; they cast, and 
caught more fish than they could drag in 
the net. Then it flashed upon John who 



Ube Voice from tbe Sbore 79 

the Stranger was. Was it that he de- 
tected the old note of authority? Or did 
he catch some echoes of those tones he 
had never hoped to hear on earth again? 
However it was, half under his breath, 
and with a rush of solemn joy, he said, "It 
is the Lord." Peter has not the clear 
insight of John. To him the good news 
is as yet but hearsay. But he can trust 
John's word and act upon it. So, when 
he heard that it was the Lord, he girt on 
his coat, and making up in energy what 
he lacked in insight, he swiftly cast him- 
self into the sea. The others turned the 
boat's head toward Jesus, and with less 
precipitation, but not less gladness, came 
slowly on, dragging their net of fishes. 

How weird is this scene, as it lies 
before us in the grey light of the early 
morning! There is Jesus standing on the 
shore; there is a man who has plunged 
into the cold water, if by any means he 
may hear Him first; and there are other 
six, slowly making their way toward 
Him. And how deep is this scene in its 
symbolic truth! These men in that boat 



80 fln tbe 1bour of Stlence 

are but a prophecy of all deep-hearted, 
earnest men. As soon as they see that 
simple, quiet, gracious figure on the shore, 
they turn towards it, and some with a 
plunge, and others dragging their net, find 
their way to Jesus. 

Nor can any such be disappointed. 
He anticipates the needs of all who come 
to Him. Those sleepy, hungry men see 
a fire of coal, and fish laid thereon, and 
bread. Then comes His gracious invita- 
tion: "Come and break your fast." Ah! 
the disciples know that this is no common 
stranger. Those are tones both of love 
and authority. The hands that distribute 
the bread and fish are wounded hands. 
And none of the disciples durst ask Him: 
Who art Thou? They are sure of Him 
now. They know His way. There is 
none like Him. They knew that it was 
the Lord. 

Oh! the pathos of the lives that fail, 
prefigured by those toiling men upon the 
lake. Out upon a troubled sea, working, it 
may be, deep into the night, even into 
the grey dawn, toiling long and catching 



Ube Doice from tbe Sbore 81 

nothing — such are some of us. And when 
in some quiet mood in the late night, or 
the early morning, a voice comes sounding 
across the waves, kt Have ye any meat? 
have ye caught anything?" all we can say 
is "No," Our souls are weary and hun- 
gry, and we have nothing to eat. Now 
why should this be so, when all the time 
there is One standing upon the shore, 
longing to tell us where tp cast our nets? 
We think we know well enough how to 
look after those nets of ours, yet we 
catch nothing, because we do not have 
a glimpse of that blessed Presence watch- 
ing patiently, not very far away, to attract 
our foolish eyes. It is this that makes the 
difference between life and life. One 
man sees Jesus, another sees Him not. 
Not to see Him is to fail, to toil for years 
and catch nothing. To see Him is to 
triumph. 

Notice, too, to what manner of men 
He comes. These men were doing the 
humble work of fishermen, when they were 
spoken to by that dear voice from the 
shore. Jesus will come and speak to any 



82 irn tbe 1bour of Silence 

man, whatever his calling, so be that he 
is not afraid, if need be, of working long 
amid darkness and loneliness and storms. 
And He came to those men just when they 
had failed. They had toiled all the night, 
and had caught nothing. Then, when in 
the morning light their failure was plain, 
it was then that Jesus stood suddenly 
upon the shore. They did not know it; 
but that was their fault, not His. He 
was there, if they had seen Him. So for 
all the sons of disappointment, if their 
work has but been brave, Jesus has His 
word of cheer. Let us listen, when He 
says "cast"; let us cast where He bids us; 
and then, when our net is full to break- 
ing, we will know with John, that this can 
be none other than the Lord. We will 
turn our boat's head toward Him, and 
make for the steady shore where He is 
standing. By His fire we may warm our- 
selves again; round His table we may 
break our fast. Is it for love that we 
hunger, or righteousness or godlikeness, 
or heavenly fellowship? "Come hither/' 
He says, "to me, and break your fast." 



XCbc Voice from tbe Sbore 83 

Jesus is now ascended above the heav- 
ens, and to-day He calls from another 
shore to men who are tossing and weary 
and hungering after immortality. If we 
but turn and make our lives set toward 
Him, we shall assuredly one day reach 
Him, and stand with Him upon that eter- 
nal shore. He will gather us round His 
hospitable table; He will feed and refresh 
us, and our cup will run over. 



Mben se see tbese things, be sure 
tbat De is near. 



THE SUMMER IS NIGH 

The air is trembling with the prophecy 
of summer. Any day you may see the buds 
burst; you may almost watch them grow 
from hour to hour. Hope and joy and 
dawning life are everywhere around, 
heralds of a better day to be. Winter has 
changed to spring, and spring, we know, 
will change to summer. We know: be- 
cause we have faith in the march of the 
seasons, in the reliability of the natural 
order established by God. While the 
earth remaineth* seedtime and harvest, 
summer and winter, shall not cease. 

Now the writers of the Bible loved the 
fair world which their God had made, 
and in which He had set them. They 
saw deep into the glory of the heavens 
above and the earth beneath. Their 
hearts thrilled in glad response to the 
changing majesty of the seasons. But 

B 7 



88 lfn tbe 10ouc ot Silence 

almost more than by their loveliness they 
were smitten by their inexorableness. To 
us the melting of spring into summer 
brings thoughts of hope; to them, to 
many of them, it bore a message of stern- 
ness, and most of all to Christ. Our poor 
hearts need all the gladness that summer 
thoughts can pour into them. "Light 
again, leaf again, life again, love again." 
For "summer is coming." But far 
other were the thoughts of our Lord, 
as He looked upon the fig tree in the 
glad springtime. "When her branch is 
now become tender, and putteth forth 
its leaves, ye know that the summer is 
nigh." But that was not all. That 
gracious image was but a parable of the 
moral order, whose sternness rang the 
knell of that sinful generation. For 
doom follows sin as surely as summer 
spring. The bursting of the bud was pro- 
phetic of the rich glory of summer; to 
look upon the one was to be sure of the 
other, yet all unseen. "Even so ye also, 
when ye see these things coming to pass, 
know that He is nigh, even at the doors," 



Zhc Summer is IRigb 89 

"He" or "it," as the margin of the Revised 
Version has it. Which is the more terri- 
ble? — that awful doom, which would 
swiftly and surely crash about those 
wicked heads, unmask their hypocrisies 
and lay their false glory in the dust; or 
the Son of Man Himself, now come in 
judgment, His gracious face turned in 
sternness on the men His love had failed 
to win? Either way, the 'spring air was 
laden with a bitter doom, which would 
burst in judgments of thunder from the 
summer heaven. 

That was a message for a crisis in the 
national career. It wakes into life again 
with the birth of every leaf; and it should 
move us all to sober thought in view of 
the summer that is coming. Signs there 
are, plain enough for the most unlettered 
to read. Much of our political life is false 
and foul; our vision of the unseen is 
blurred by the lust of the eyes; our reli- 
gion is a compromise with the world. 
There are men in the market and on the 
exchange, who are daily selling their souls 
for gold; there are youths who are nightly 



90 IFn tbe 1bour of Silence 

imperilling, if not ruining, their fair name 
in the saloon and the theatre; there are 
matrons whose only care is to hear and 
see some new thing and to have their 
names in the public print, however 
insipid be the company; there are maid- 
ens whose only anxiety is for the body, 
what they shall put on. And the Son of 
Man is coming, surely as the summer, and 
"when ye see these things coming to pass, 
know ye that He is nigh, even at the 
doors. " We know not the day nor the 
hour; we know only that He is nigh, even 
at the doors, and that He will soon be 
upon us in some great opportunity, which 
will be our ruin if it be not our salvation. 
And if we do not, every man of us, cleanse 
the hands with which we ply our trade 
and commerce, and purify the hearts 
which we lift in worship to God, He may, 
indeed, let us alone a little while, for He 
is very merciful, but at the last He will 
cut us down, doing unto us as He has 
done unto others, both in ancient and mod- 
ern days. 

The summer is coming. What manner 



Ube Summer Us 1FUgb 91 

of summer shall it be? A summer in 
which the sun shall blaze fiercely down, 
and dry up the happy, roaring, torrent 
beds, and leave our land a withered and 
desolate abomination? Or a summer 
whose sun shall bless all life of plant or 
animal or man on which his genial 
warmth falls? The Son of Man is com- 
ing; shall He find faith upon the earth? 
Earnest workmen, generous employers, 
honest tradesmen, honorable politicians, 
incorruptible electors, truth-loving teach- 
ers, fearless preachers, upright adminis- 
trators? When He comes, as come He 
will, may He find us ready and undis- 
mayed! 



Mben /IDoses came oowm from tbe 
mount, tbe skin of bis face sbone. 



THE SHINING FACE 

The summer has its tragedies. It is 
then that God seeks to restore our soul 
by bringing us into the presence of the 
unsullied glories of His creation, and by 
spreading His rich and beautiful table 
before us, and how often do we rise but 
thankless guests — nay, forgetful .that we 
have been guests at all! Small wonder 
indeed that in the city a worldly heart is 
never visited by thoughts of other-world- 
liness. The city is the scene of strife and 
competition. There are no broad fields 
of green, no wide expanse of blue above 
us, to remind us of the great primal sanc- 
tities, and to rebuke the folly of our haste 
and our often too unseemly warfare. But 
can a man be mean in the presence of the 
mountains? Can he retain his sordidness 
and worldliness when he is standing upon 
holy ground? Apparently he can. Too 

95 



96 In tbe Ibour of Silence 

many can. They return from their 
sojourn amid God's beautiful and stately 
things, refreshed indeed in body, but not 
purified in purpose, nor rekindled to 
nobler hopes and aspirations. 

And why? Because they have no sense 
of a Presence — the presence that haunts 
those things and moves about those 
scenes, as once He walked in a garden, 
and that speaks home to the hearts of 
men, as once He uttered a word which 
reached a man's heart and made him pause 
and pray. To be so near God, as many of 
us shall soon be, breathing His fragrant 
air, walking upon His mountains, sailing 
upon His lakes — to be so near Him, and yet 
to miss Him, is it not passing sad? "What 
is seen hath not been made out of things 
which do appear." But men learn that 
"by faith," that divine intuition which 
finds God everywhere and sees His 
angels in the flaming fire and the stormy 
winds. 

Now the soul needs bracing as well as 
the body; and if she is to come back pre- 
pared to face the unknown conflict, to 



XTbe Sbining face 97 

meet, as meet she must, the uninspiring 
routine of every day, then she, too, must 
have her communion with God. And 
where can we better commune with Him 
than in the great silences into which He 
shall guide us, and in which He will bless 
us, if we let Him? It is written of Moses 
that when he came down from the mount, 
on which he had met and listened to 
God, the skin of his face shone. He did 
not know it, but the people did. There 
can be no mistaking the man who has 
come down from a sojourn with God on 
the mountain. The mountain alone could 
not do it, awe-inspiring as that is. Many 
a man will come hpme this summer whose 
face will wear the same hard smile, whose 
eyes will have their old calculating look; 
and it would be difficult enough to tell 
that he had been on the mountains. He 
has been in the palace of the King but 
he has not seen the King Himself. He 
does not know the Lord of the place. 
The shining face which will attract even 
the thoughtless gaze of the world, the 
quieter step, the chastened smile, can 



9S In tbe Dout of Silence 

only be his who has tarried for a while 
with his God upon the mountain. 

It was on another mountain that Jesus 
was transfigured, "and his garments 
became glistering exceeding white, so as 
no fuller on earth can white them;" and 
when He came down He cast out devils. 
And for us, too, there will be devils 
enough to cast out, when we come down 
and back to the temptations with which 
even" walk in life is too thickly strewn. 
But they are to be cast out only by the 
man who has been transfigured on the 
mountain top, and who has spoken with 
Moses and Elijah, and, above all, with 
his Lord. Let the majesty of the moun- 
tains and the melancholy of the sea lift 
up our hearts to Him who is Lord of them 
and of us. They are but the outer courts 
whence the reverent soul passes into the 
presence of the Eternal. How much, 
how unspeakably much, he loses who, as 
he walks by pastures green and waters of 
quietness, does not see in the background 
the gentle figure of the Lord our Shep- 
herd! 



ttbe Sbining 3face 99 

Rest from toil is not rest from religion. 
It is opportunity. His servants serve 
Him day and night. "They shall be still 
praising Thee." The sight of the Crea- 
tor's abundant glories can only attune a 
true soul to a devouter worship. 

"In His hand are the deep places of the earth. 
The heights of the mountains are His also. 
The sea is His, and He made it. 

• And His hands formed the dry land. 
O come, let us worship and bow down." 



-"c 



De brougbt me out into a broao place. 



A BROAD PLACE 

One July evening, as the sun was set- 
ting, I wandered along a narrow road that 
wound across a hillside of the German 
Harz. The road was somewhat gloomy, 
as trees were thickly planted on both 
sides, and a viper had been seen there 
but a day or two before. The path 
climbed almost imperceptibly to a point 
where it bent sharply to the left, and lo! 
there burst upon my view a scene of thrill- 
ing contrast to the narrow way by which 
I had come. Miles and miles of lovely 
land stretched right and left, and on in 
front, away to distant hills — all bathed in 
the beautiful evening light. The sense 
of relief, of surprise, of room and dis- 
tance, after emerging from the dark and 
crooked way, was almost overpowering. 
Under the inspiration of the larger out- 
look, a deep and glad content came over 

one. Here it was possible to breathe 

103 



104 Hn tbe 1bour of Silence 

more freely, and to think the most hope- 
ful things. A new sense of wonder and 
undreamt-of possibilities woke in the 
heart; and, with the narrow way behind 
me, and the brave smiling land before 
me, the verse of the Psalmist leaped into 
my mind: "He bringeth me out into a 
broad place." There, as it seemed to me, 
was a living picture of the difference that 
God makes to the life that trusts Him. 
Without Him, gloom, danger, and many 
turnings; with Him, the peace and liberty 
of the broad place. 

"He bringeth me out into a broad 
place." That was a mountaineer's confes- 
sion of faith. Pent within narrow passes, 
and not seldom pursued by relentless foes, 
he longed to rest his eyes upon farther 
reaches and wider horizons; and when he 
found them, they reminded him of the 
room and the liberty won for him by his 
God. How noble a confession, how sim- 
ple, how profound! He, the unseen God, 
bringeth me, whose life is cramped and 
harassed, out into a broad place. And 
that is a confession for Christian lips no 



H JSroaD place 105 

less than for those of the ancient poet. In 
the light of Christ we see more clearly 
how broad is that place into which we 
are brought. 

One of the deadliest enemies of the 
liberty and vision which should be ours is 
the spirit of care — that nervous anxiety 
which fears the days to come, and plans 
and schemes and frets, as if there were 
no Father above us. It is 'indeed a som- 
bre and discouraging path along which 
those travel who know of no resources 
but those which they find in themselves. 
They see nothing but a step or two ahead. 
They fear every winding of the way 
beyond. They kpow that any moment 
dangerous things may cross their path. 

But let Christ speak His emancipating 
word, 

4 'Be not anxious for the morrow. 
Behold the birds of the heaven. 
Consider the lilies of the field. 
Be not therefore anxious, saying, 
What shall we eat, or what shall we drink? 
For your heavenly Father knoweth 
That ye have need of all these things." 



106 Hn tbe 1bour ot Silence 

The faltering soul which listens and 
believes, is led to a height from which 
it can survey the vast expanses of the 
future with fearlessness and joy. The 
sky, which we had forgotten because 
we could not see it, stretches overhead 
again; a fair land lies before us as far as 
we can see; and the quiet light of the 
love of God rests over all. 

And what Christ does for the victim of 
care, He can do for the victim of selfish- 
ness. For the path of the self-centered 
man is also dark and lonely. He looks 
upon other men but as means to his ends ? 
and so forfeits the love of those whom 
he uses. He has no eye for interests 
beyond his own, sees in his friends noth- 
ing but instruments of his own ambition 
or pleasure, has no share in any of the 
great movements — whether social, polit- 
ical or religious — that lift humanity a little 
nearer its goal; and so he goes alone and 
unloved along his selfish way. He is like 
a waif in the centuries. He does not feel 
the divine thrill that runs through all the 
ages. 



a BroaD place 107 

But let Christ take such an one by the 
hand, and bring him to a pinnacle from 
which he can see the far-stretching king- 
dom of God. Let him look with earnest 
eyes at the vistas that Christ opens up: a 
kingdom that stretches over every conti- 
nent and island, a kingdom to which 
humanity owes her greatest gains, and 
within which the noblest wprk of our race 
has been done, a kingdom, too, within 
which the plainest man finds the monot- 
onous tasks of his daily life consecrated 
and transfigured, a kingdom that endureth 
forever and ever. Let him look at the 
church of Christ, warring implacably for 
ages against all the forces that stain and 
destroy the human soul — that church 
which is built upon a rock and against 
which no power shall ever prevail, for the 
Master hath spoken it. Let him look 
until he feels how poor, how pathetic and 
foolish, is the little life that stands, 
unmoved and irresponsive, in the pres- 
ence of that eternal kingdom and invinci- 
ble church. It is with the largest ideas 
and the bravest imaginations that Christ 



108 Hn tbe 1bour ot Silence 

appeals to our better life. "Our Father 
who art in heaven." In all the common 
things that make up our life it is no less 
than that Father's will that is to be done, 
and His kingdom that is to come. By liv- 
ing within the inspiration of these mighty 
thoughts, we learn to breathe the ampler 
air of the heavenly places in which He 
dwells. Verily He bringeth us out into a 
broad place. 

And again, the glorious sight that 
greeted my eyes after reaching the end 
of the narrow way seemed to me but a 
prophecy of the glory that awaits the 
faithful who have gone through the last 
valley. That, too, must be dark, and it 
has to be trodden alone. Few men can 
think of the way with joy. But Christ 
has robbed it of its terrors, and we may 
be sure that it leads to a beautiful land. 
The glory of God shall lighten it, and 
the Lamb shall be the lamp thereof; and 
our song there shall be, "He led me 
through the valley of the deep shadow, 
and He hath brought me out into a broad 
place." 



TKRben tbe SLoro turneo again tbe cap* 
tivits of Zion, lifte tbem tbat oream 
were we. 



LIKE THEM THAT DREAM 

Not many living men to-day know 
much about exile. Many indeed have 
left their own land for another. But they 
have left it, for the most part, of their 
own free will; they have not been driven 
away by stress of persecution or war. 
Now many of the psalms, and some, too, 
of the greatest, will be for ever a sealed 
book, until we learn to understand the 
exile's heart, with its wild regrets and its 
wilder hopes. The true citizens of Zion 
could never be happy in the Babylon to 
which they had been driven. The level 
monotony of its plains contrasted too 
sadly with the glorious hills of the home 
land to which in imagination they often 
lifted up their eyes; the brilliance of its 
temples fell like a blight upon the hearts 
of men who yearned to stand within the 
courts of their Lord in Zion. So, when 



n2 ifn tbe 1bour of Silence 

the night of exile had passed, and the 
morning of redemption was breaking, 
there arose within those desolate hearts 
an overpowering gladness. 
4 'When the Lord turned again the captivity of 
Zion, 
Like them that dream were we. M 

Like men in a dream they crossed the 
weary desert that lay between them and 
home — the now glorious desert which had 
become the highway of their God. They 
reached the holy city and trod its ancient 
streets once more. They walked about it 
as in a dream — that dear city they had 
never thought to see again. Soon indeed 
they were to be met by more reverses and 
disappointment; but for the moment they 
could forget the sorrow that beset them 
behind and before, and abandon them- 
selves to the joy of those who have come 
home again to the Father's house. The 
Lord had done great things for them, 
and they were glad. For very joy they 
could hardly believe their eyes. It was 
all like a dream. We can fancy them 
moving wistfully about from point to 



Xifte Ubem Ubat Bream 113 

point, fearful lest they should break the 
spell; and then bursting into a hymn of 
praise, when they had assured their weary 
hearts that the dream was a living, throb- 
bing fact. 

Every man has his Babylon. In some 
kind of captivity we are all languishing — 
in the bondage of fear, of sorrow, of sin, 
or of death. The shackles are upon our 
soul, and the desert is between us and the 
land where we should be. Well is it for 
us, if we allow the Lord to turn our cap- 
tivity, and bring us back to Zion, and 
bless us with that dream which the world 
cannot give, and which nothing but our 
own doubt and infidelity can take away. 

There is many a redemption in our 
common life that dimly shadows forth the 
redemption which Christ is yearning to 
work upon our captive spirits. Worn 
with the stress of a long year's work, we 
leave it all behind us some summer day, 
and go away to the hills or the fields, 
where there is room. The soul expands 
into a new sense of liberty. The cares 
are forgotten. We feel our kinship with 



ii4 1Fn tbe 1bour ot Silence 

the great primal things. Our spirits 
drink in the gladness and the redemption 
of it all: and the world about us seems as 
a dream. 

Or it may be that our life has been 
crushed by the horror of some long sus- 
pense. We waited for a word, or a turn- 
ing of circumstance, which seemed as if it 
would never come. At last the word was 
spoken, or circumstance changed; and in 
a moment our world was transformed. 
It was all as fair as a dream. The sur- 
prise passed into a rapture of gratitude, 
as the certainty grew upon us that the 
dream was fact. And after such a mo- 
ment, when startled by some sudden 
beneficence of God, we can never be alto- 
gether pessimists any more. 

Now such redemption from care or 
suspense is but a faint prophecy of that 
larger redemption and that world of more 
glorious dream, into which Christ will 
usher all who will let Him. "When the 
Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, 
we were like them that dream." To the 
captive Jew, that Lord was the invisible 



Xifte Ubem Ubat Dream 115 

God: to us, the Lord is Christ. When our 
Lord Christ turns any captivity of ours in 
which we have been languishing, then we 
too, smitten by the splendor of the 
redemption which He can work, become 
like them that dream. Who has not been 
the bondslave of weariness — not the wear- 
iness of the body only, but that deeper 
weariness of the mind and heart? Tired 
of the shibboleths of party and sect, of 
the negations of criticism or the perplex- 
ities of creed, of the conventional stand- 
ards of society and church, seeking rest 
and finding none, believing in the dream- 
land, yet languishing in the captivities — 
such are some of us. Then some familiar 
word of Christ comes back upon us. "All 
ye that are weary, come unto me, and I 
will give you rest." The old words light 
up with new meaning, tremble with new 
power. As in a flash, we see — and we 
wonder why we did not see it before — 
that it is to Him we are to come, not to 
party or sect, criticism or creed, society or 
church, but to His own dear self, and 
when we come, we find with glad surprise, 



n6 Hn tbe 1bour of Stlence 

how easy is His yoke, and how light His 
burden. We are startled by the freedom 
which is ours in His service. When He 
turns again our captivity, we are like 
them that dream. 

There is no captivity which He cannot 
turn. The deepest sin and the sharpest 
sorrow — it is all alike to Him. He is the 
Redeemer and He can redeem to the 
uttermost. We must, however, be willing 
to be redeemed. We must obey, when 
He says, "Follow/' But when we hate 
the sin which vexes Him and turn with 
faith and penitence to Him, when we fol- 
low in the track marked out by His 
wounded feet, He will bring us into His 
own beautiful dreamland, in which His 
Father causes His sun to shine upon the 
erring and the broken-hearted. Pardon 
for sin and consolation in sorrow — your 
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
need of these things. 

There is another captivity to which 
few, if any, have been altogether stran- 
gers. There are some who "through fear 
of death are all their lifetime subject to 



Xifee Ubem Ubat Bream 117 

bondage," and some time or other, every 
thoughtful man is captive to that fear. 
What is death? Who knows? Its mys- 
tery is perplexing. Its possibilities are 
weird. Its darkness is impenetrable. 
The rich man's voice could be heard 
across the awful gulf that separated him 
from i\braham; but not across that still 
more awful gulf that separated him from 
his brethren in the land of the living. 
And no Lazarus ever came back to them 
with a grim tale upon his unsealed lips. 
The mystery of it all must at some time 
strike fear into any but a reckless heart. 
But in the fulness of the time there 
came One to deliver all those who 
through fear of death are all their life- 
time subject to bondage. He met and 
vanquished that dark and cruel Power 
which has been the terror of millions. 
After His victory He passed into His 
shining house, and He is now standing at 
the door, which is never shut day or 
night, to welcome all who have finished 
their course in faith. So death is none 
other than the gate of heaven. How 



u8 Hn tbe 1bour ot Silence 

strange and dreamlike it will seem to us, 
when we are delivered not only from the 
fear of death, but from death itself, and 
find ourselves citizens of the heavenly 
city, walking about its streets, marking its 
bulwarks, counting its towers, finding our 
lost ones, meeting the patient and mighty 
saints of all the generations, singing 
praises with the glorious company of the 
apostles, and the noble army of martyrs, 
worshipping the God who loved us and 
gave His son to turn our captivity. Ah! 
surely when the Lord thus turns the cap- 
tivity of His careworn Zion, we shall be 
like them that dream. 



Zbey tbat sow in tears sball reap 
witb ringing cries. 



THE SOWING AND THE SHEAVES 

"When the Lord turned again the captivity of 
Zion, 

Like them that dream were we. 
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, 

And our tongue with a ringing cry." 

But soon the laughter turned to tears, 
and the cry became a cry of sorrow, be- 
cause the spell of the dream had been 
broken by hard and stubborn fact. The 
city to which the exiles had come back 
was but a mockery of their high hopes. 
Its ancient glories had departed. The sky 
above them was brazen; the earth 
beneath them was barren; and around 
them were enemies who thwarted their 
every plan. So they lift up their sorrow- 
ful faces and pray again. 

'Turn again, O Lord, our captivity 
As waters in the dry south land." 

The facts had driven away the dream, 

121 



122 un tbe Ifoour of Silence 

and with the dream, the joy and the glory 
of life had vanished. They walked about 
their ancient city as disillusioned men; on 
every street their failure stared them in 
the face. They looked for much, says 
Haggai, but behold! little. They are as 
men who have sown in tears, sown, too, it 
would seem, among the stones and thorns. 
If harvest there be at all, what can they 
look for but a few miserable sheaves — a 
veritable harvest of tears? 

But no! a thousand times no! Not such 
is the faith of Israel! 

"They that sow in tears 

Shall reap with ringing cries. 

Forth he fares weeping, 
Bearing the seed to scatter, 

Home he comes with ringing cries, 
His arm full of sheaves. " 

We thought we were listening to the 
wail of broken-hearted men. Now we 
know it to be the glad shout of triumphant 
faith. The faith which breathes through 
the sorrowful verses of the Psalm is as 
strong as that which throbs in its earlier 
part. Nay, is it not stronger? For it is 



Zlbe Sowing anfc tbe Sbeaves 123 

easy to send up your ringing cry, when 
Jehovah turns the captivity of Zion, gives 
you your heart's desire and brings you into 
the haven where you would be. But it is 
different when you are on the dry land, 
and when the seed has to be sown upon it 
with tears. Then nothing but faith in a 
kindly providence, which knows how to 
bless as well as tarry, can redeem the soul 
from sorrow and despair. Or rather it is 
no abstract providence, however kindly; 
it is the living God Himself. It is Jeho- 
vah with whom the singer pleads to turn 
Zion's captivity — He who will and can; 
for has He not turned another captivity 
as hopeless and terrible? The eye of 
faith sees the rain already descend upon 
the waterless ground. Through her 
tears, faith can see the golden harvest 
waving upon the now barren land, though 
there may be years, nay centuries, be- 
tween the sowing and the sheaves. 
Through the silence, broken only by sobs, 
the ear of faith can hear the ringing 
shouts, as home the harvesters come, 
bearing their sheaves with them. So the 



124 1Fn tbe Ifoour of Silence 

dream has not been forgotten after all. 
No man can see such sights and hear such 
sounds but the man who bears the dream 
about with him in his heart. Such a dream 
of Jehovah's love, such an experience of 
the surprises of His redemption, will in- 
spire and glorify our common life; and if 
our sowing be half in tears, it will be also 
half in rapture. 

Many a generation of pilgrims must 
have proved the truth of this pilgrim 
Psalm. It was not an easy thing for them 
to leave the far country, which they had 
made their home, and journey to the holy 
city. They had to go over long and often 
perilous ways. They had to sow in tears. 
But when their feet stood within the 
courts of the house of their Lord, and 
their souls thrilled with the stimulus and 
inspiration of the worship, they felt that 
they had not sown in vain. They went 
home glad, refreshed and strong, with 
their arms full of sheaves that would 
satisfy their hunger after God for many 
days to come. 

Yes. Life is an uneven thing; and it 



XCbe Sowing an& tbe Sbeaves 125 

is the fewest to whom it is given to rejoice 
evermore. But there is a God who can 
turn every captivity; that is the hope and 
the consolation of life. Every winter 
shall change to spring, and every seed- 
time to harvest. Some day indeed tears 
will stand on every earnest face. The 
discipline of life may vex and trouble us. 
But it need not crush us, if we can only 
believe in a God who can change our for- 
tunes and turn our captivities. "My first 
impressions/' wrote a great missionary to 
the cannibal islands of the southern seas, 
"my first impressions drove me, I must 
confess, to the verge of utter dismay. On 
beholding these natives in their paint and 
nakedness and misery, my heart was as full 
of horror as pity." But about thirty years 
after, the tears had changed to laughter. 
"I have been to the islands again," he 
wrote, "since my return from Britain. 
The whole inhabitants of Aniwa were 
there to welcome me, and my procession 
to the old mission house was more like 
the triumphal march of a conqueror than 
that of a humble missionary. Every serv- 



126 Un tbe 1bour of Silence 

ice of the Church was fully sustained by 
native teachers." 

And yet life is not always so simple. 
Every brave and strenuous man does not 
quit the scene of his activity at the head 
of a triumphal procession, and with cries 
of approbation ringing in his ears. No! 
many a man has been called away with 
tears in his eyes and sorrow in his heart. 
The Hebrew words of the last verse of 
the Psalm leave it open for us to suppose 
that the man who sows with tears is not 
also — at any rate not always — the man 
who comes singing home, with his arms 
full of sheaves. One sows, another reaps. 
The Master knew the pathos of that 
experience. Yet it were almost untrue to 
the genius of our religion to speak of 
that as pathos; for is not that just the 
end and the glory of every human life — 
to contribute, as it may and can, to the 
great far-off purpose of God? Here, in 
the Psalm, is a large and beautiful faith 
in a beneficent providence — the faith that, 
whether soon or late, the seed sown in 
weariness and tears will be brought back 



XTbe Sowing anO tbe Sbeaves 127 

as sheaves on nimble arms and with shouts 
of gladness. The hands that scattered 
the seed may not be suffered to bear 
home the golden grain, but it is borne 
home by somebody. For the laborers 
are God's and the harvest is God's. Xo 
seed is ever flung from any faithful hand 
in vain. In His good time, if not in ours, 
it will spring up and bear its destined 
fruit; and some heart, if not ours, will be 
glad. Yes, and ours, too; for God is as 
mindful of the sower as the reaper, and 
one day — how far away we know not — he 
that soweth and he that reapeth shall 
rejoice together. 



XTbeg oiggeo in tbe valley ano fount* 
tbere a well of living water. 



DEEP DIGGING 

There are parts of Palestine refreshed 
the long, fierce summer through by 
springs and copious fountains, and there 
are other parts where springs are few and 
men who need water must dig for it. It 
was such a spot that Isaac had for a 
home; and child of the promise as he 
was, with strange visions of a splendid 
future in the far-off days haunting those 
dreamy eyes of his, he has yet to face the 
practical problem of finding water for 
thirsty men and cattle. In part, he is heir 
to his father's wells; for the rest, he 
must dig for the water he needs, dig till 
he finds it. "And Isaac's servants digged 
in the valley and found there a well of liv- 
ing water." How the eyes of the diggers 
would gleam as, almost like a human 
thing, the fresh, kindly water leaped up 
to welcome them! 

131 



132 1fn tbe 1bour of Silence 

Living water for living men; for men 
who will steadily and bravely cut their 
way through all difficulty and impediment 
to the refreshment without which their 
soul languisheth as in a thirsty land. 

And is not Palestine, with her hills and 
her valleys, her dry places and her wells, 
the mirror of all human experience? 
Sometimes a thirsty tract of our own life 
is watered and blessed by wells which we 
have not digged. All unexpected, water 
leaps up from the hard rock at our feet, 
or, at the least, we have fallen heir to 
wells which our fathers have digged for 
us. But there are other tracts on which 
our fathers can do nothing for us, and we 
shall perish of thirst if we will not our- 
selves dig down till we reach the living 
water. 

Every life that would be mighty must 
know what it is to muse. Every heart 
that would commune with God must 
throb with yearning and aspiration. 
There must be mysticism somewhere. 
But there must be more. The clear, cool 
water is not to be had for the wishing, 



i 



S>eep Ending 133 

but for the digging. With faith in the 
ground beneath our feet we must dig 
down and down till the sweat stands upon 
our brow. Thus and only thus can we 
reach the water, and only thus do we 
deserve it. This treasure, like many 
another, is hidden, and will only reveal 
itself to the man who bends his back to 
dig for it. 

Genius is rare; but industry, the capac- 
ity for taking infinite pains, is nearly as 
rare. And that is why so many lives are 
so sapless, so destitute of any touch of 
the divine. They are not refreshed by 
living waters, because there has been no 
digging. Any experience carries deep 
down within it something of God. But 
we will do nothing more than scratch the 
surface of it; most often, not even that. 
We stand lazily upon it, without piercing 
through it to the thing that would refresh 
us. We forget that if we descend to the 
depths, He is there. How stimulating 
should be the contemplation of our past 
as we watch it wandering, now this way, 
now that, but never away from God's 



134 fin tbe 1£>our of Silence 

unslumbering care! But the days drift 
away. From thoughtlessness or indiffer- 
ence we will not descend into their mean- 
ing and purpose; and can we wonder that 
they deny us their inspiration? There is 
no living water for the man who will not 
dig. 

How seldom is it, too, that study is a 
delight! No great book, least of all, 
Scripture, will yield up its secrets unless 
to the fierce persistence of the digger; for 
those secrets are hidden in the depths. 
We move airily across its chapters, when 
we should pause and assure ourselves that 
deep down are living waters, and brace 
ourselves resolutely to the patient search 
without which those waters cannot all be 
ours. Surface meanings are for idle 
souls; the more patiently and prayerfully 
we search the depths, the more surely 
and abundantly shall we find that well of 
water which springeth up into everlasting 
life. 

One of Christ's parables immortalizes 
a man who said, "I cannot dig." And it 
is no accident that this man was a dishon- 



Deep WiQQinQ 135 

est knave, who wasted his master's goods 
and had no sense of stewardship. But 
why should any man of us refuse to dig, 
whose hope is sustained by the promise 
of the Lord that he that seeketh shall 
surely find? 



<3oo over all, ano tbcougb all, ano 
in all. 



THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE 

Perhaps the world, like the individual, 
has forgotten many things it once knew: 
and one of those things is the paramount 
importance of religion. Time was when 
every important act of life had to receive 
her sanction. The unseen was felt to 
play about the seen, and by sacrifice or 
prayer it was acknowledged. But the 
advance of knowledge drove away the 
mystery it should have heightened, and 
the world was left devoid of wonder and 
of God. 

Now one cannot but be struck with the 
Biblical attitude to knowledge. Some- 
times it is depreciated, as that which 
puffeth up, and contrasted, to its discredit, 
with the love which buildeth up: it is a 
thing which "shall be done away." But 
more often it is linked with religion, and 

its power made to depend upon the close- 

139 



140 Hn tbe Tfooux of Silence 

ness of this link. The fear of the Lord is 
the beginning of knowledge, at once its 
foundation and its crown. 

It is not because the Bible is a relig- 
ious book that it so constantly combines 
things which the modern world as con- 
stantly strives to hold apart. It is because 
it is a true book, and because the men who 
wrote it saw deep into the meaning of 
things. They saw that besetting all 
things behind and before, was God, and 
that no real knowledge of the things was 
possible apart from the God who beset 
them. 

The law of the Lord is perfect, not 
only the law of Scripture, but also those 
great laws which uphold and govern all 
men and worlds. These laws, too, like 
that other, "rejoice the heart" of the true 
student; for he finds in them revelations 
of a majestic presence, which is from 
everlasting to everlasting. It matters not 
whether his study be that of moral or 
astronomical law; every new fact will be 
a fresh revelation of the Infinite and 
Eternal, whom no one, by searching, can 



Ube Iftes of Hmowle&ge 141 

find out to perfection, whose glory flashes 
in star and flower, in the devotion of the 
saint and the herosim of the martyr. 
"Night unto night sheweth knowledge," 
but to the psalmist, it was knowledge of 
the glory of God. "When I consider the 
heavens/' said another psalmist, "what is 
man, that Thou art mindful of him?" 
His eyes saw beyond the heavens to One 
who made the sun and the moon and the 
stars also. 

Imagination trembles to think to what 
soaring strains those deep-hearted poets of 
far-off days would have struck their harps, 
had they known the awful majesty of the 
universe, as science has revealed it to us 
to-day. How shallow is the knowledge 
which breeds scepticism or even indiffer- 
ence! A true soul that has stood even in 
the outer court of such a temple, can only 
be bowed to wonder, reverence, adora- 
tion. 

The knowledge of facts without regard 
to the God who created and controls 
them, is knowledge after the flesh and 
not after the spirit. The materialist 



142 f n tbe 1bour of Silence 

should be shamed by the psalmist. Study 
is supposed by many to be dull; it is so 
only to those who do not see the world in 
the light of God. Belief in God as the 
Creator of the world, of all those facts 
and laws which science searches so far as 
it may; belief in Him as the Lord of 
lords, guiding history towards some far-off 
event, for which, in our best moments, we 
long with longing unspeakable: such a 
belief makes study of every sort an inspi- 
ration and a delight. 

This sense of God is the key of 
knowledge, now and evermore. Most of 
the professional teachers of Scripture in 
Christ's time had taken it away from the 
people. They misrepresented and misin- 
terpreted the God who was their people's 
glory, hiding His splendor behind multi- 
tudes of heart-breaking rules. In so 
doing they kept men out of the kingdom 
of heaven, and brought down upon their 
own heads a curse. So all true knowl- 
edge should bring men nearer, if not into, 
the kingdom of heaven; for it is a glimpse 
of the ineffable glory. Few men see it 



TTbe Kes of Tknowlcbgc 143 

often; most men never see it at all. But 
oh! how we gaze in adoring silence, when 
in some rare deep mood 

"Our souls have sight of that immortal sea," 

and the mighty meaning of the world 
rises before us: life, death, God, eternity! 
Life becomes great, and study luminous 
and inspiring, when accompanied by the 
sense of the "one God and Father of all, 
who is over all, and through all, and in 
all." 



1bave se not reao wbat Bavio oio? 



HAVE YE NOT READ? 

This is a question of Jesus, and like all 
His questions it searches and tries. It 
assumes that intelligent people will read; 
it implies that they ought to read intelli- 
gently. It was addressed to men familiar 
with the letter of the Old Testament, but 
unvisited by any gleams of its insight and 
inspiration. To-day it falls too often 
upon ears to which the words of psalm 
and prophecy, gospel and epistle and 
apocalypse are but a faded memory; and 
whether is it the greater crime to read 
and misinterpret or not to read at all? 
The Pharisees and Sadducees betrayed 
the trust committed to them by prosaic 
pedantry, by a loveless and unedifying 
literalism; and they have their successors 
to-day in pulpit and pew. But is not 
theirs the greatest treachery to the trust 
committed once for ail to the Church of 

147 



148 ifn tbe 1bour of Silence 

Christ in the Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testament who simply ignore it? 
Indifference is a contempt more fatal than 
opposition Happier are they who have 
striven according to their light to possess 
themselves of the living oracles than they 
who can only hang their heads in shame 
when the Lord asks, "Have ye not read?" 
Never was there so much reading or 
so many readers as to-day; and so far 
this is a sign to be welcomed. For men 
do not live by bread only, but by words of 
the living God and of men, the living and 
the dead. Mind is hungering for knowl- 
edge, and soul for rest, and they satisfy 
their longings with the dreams, the imag- 
inations, the discoveries of other minds 
and souls. And this is right. The ques- 
tion of Jesus — have ye not read? — has a 
wider scope than that for which it was 
first designed. The books which His 
assailants might be presumed to have 
read were those which enshrined the 
noblest national thought. These books 
happened to be the Old Testament 
Scriptures: they represented the heights 



Dave 2£>e 1Rot *ftea&? 149 

to which the wisest and holiest of the 
people had climbed. But the principle 
involved is one that applies to all that is 
best in every national literature. On 
every man lies the sacred duty of 
acquainting himself with whatsoever 
things are pure and honorable and uplift- 
ing in any literature that his opportunities 
render accessible to him. "Have ye not 
read?" If not, how can ye excuse your- 
selves? For all around and open to the 
poorest are the means of dispelling igno- 
rance, mitigating perplexity, solving 
doubt, sustaining resolution, kindling 
imagination. Literature is a trust; we 
must offer to all that would build us up in 
knowledge or goodness an unhesitating 
welcome. The worth of the Old Testa- 
ment carried with it to the ancient Jew 
the obligation to familiarize himself with 
its contents. So every gracious thought, 
every ennobling impulse that books may 
bring imposes on us a similar obligation. 
Soul must commune with soul, or it will 
starve and die. It is not open to us to 
ignore any message that might illumine 



iSo 1Fn tbe faour of Silence 

or stimulate or soothe; have ye not 
read? 

But the obligation to read comes with 
peculiarly binding force in the case of 
Holy Scripture. There, as nowhere else, 
are words of eternal life; words which 
make a man strong to endure sorrow and 
tribulation in this world and inspire him 
with hope in the world to come of life 
everlasting. There, as nowhere else, God 
meets man, and man may meet God. It 
lifts him to Paradise, and shows him 
things unspeakable, and from its pages on 
the lowliest life falls the quiet light of 
eternity. Wisdom and might are there; 
in the trusts and hopes which it inspires, 
men can bravely live and quietly and con- 
fidently die; for the issues are with God. 
Then have ye not read? 

With the biographies of the Old Test- 
ament and certain chapters of prophecy, 
with the main incidents of the gospels 
and certain chapters of the epistles, a 
superficial familiarity is not uncommon; 
but how many golden pages, how many 
whole books are to most of us as if they 



tm\>e !2e mot 1Rea5? 151 

had never been! We solemnly profess 
our faith in these books as in some sense 
the Word of God; have we read them or 
have we not? How comes it that the 
greatest Book in the world — the Book 
which, apart from the tremendous signif- 
icance of its message, takes the first place 
in the literature of the world — is the one 
to which least justice is done by the read- 
ing public? A novel can count upon a 
more patient and earnest hearing than 
the Book about whose verbal inspiration 
the most bitter controversies have been 
raised. The Bible is not all easy reading. 
There are dark things in prophecy and 
things "hard to be understood in the 
epistles of our beloved brother Paul." 
But that only makes it all the more im- 
perative that the ministry, who have been 
solemnly set aside to devote their time 
and gifts to ministering to the people in 
the things of God, should put their people 
in possession of the entire and unmuti- 
lated Word of God by the exercise of all 
the opportunities which a devout scholar- 
ship has placed at their disposal. The 



152 Hn tbe faour of Silence 

people are bound to read; their ministers 
or servants must be prepared to expound 
and to make light to arise in their dark- 
ness. If they fail there, their failure is 
great and grievous. 

Does the enthusiasm of the older 
saints for a Bible which had no New 
Testament not shame us who live in the 
fulness of the times and who have seen 
the Lord? How often have we cried, 
"The law of Jehovah is my delight, 

In it I will meditate day and night. 

It is more precious than gold, 

Yea, than fine gold in plenty, 

And sweeter than honey, 

Yea, than honey that drops from the comb." 

Jesus Himself, in whose heart the per- 
fect law was written, yet turned to the 
words of Old Testament Scripture for 
strength and comfort in His agony. In 
the words of a prophecy He opened and 
justified His gracious ministry; in the 
words of a psalm He commended His 
departing spirit into His Father's hands. 
The brightest and bravest faith was not in- 
dependent of Scripture, nor can it ever be. 



1bave !2e 1Rot 1Reat>? 153 

But it is possible to read and to be yet 
unblessed. Without an open mind and 
heart the clearest lesson may be missed, 
and the most stirring example unedifying. 
In all our reading we must covet earnestly 
the power to apply; we must read with 
the heart and with the understanding 
also. "Have ye not read," said Jesus to 
the Sadducees, "how God spake unto 
Moses?" Of course they had. But not 
with the seeing eye; they had not seen 
the latent truth of immortality in the 
simple words, "I am the God of Abra- 
ham." "Have ye not read what David 
did?" said Jesus again to the Pharisees. 
Of course they had. But they did not see 
how it disarmed their objection to the 
innocent conduct of the hungry disciples 
as they plucked the ears of corn on the 
Sabbath day. They only saw ancient and 
irrelevant facts — they did not see in those 
facts the embodiment of principles which 
might illustrate and guide the life of their 
own day. They had got the lesson by 
memory, but not by heart. 

Let us read, then, not merely that we 



iS4 Hn tbe Ifoour of Silence 

may know the truth, but that we may lay 
it up in our hearts and practise it in our 
lives. With such intelligent and prayer- 
ful reading what an inspiration biography 
might be! "Have ye not read what David 
did?" The wisdom of the sage, the cour- 
age of the hero, the holiness of the saint, 
are all for us: they will lift us out of our 
bondage into the liberty of the brave and 
free. Have ye not read what Abraham, 
Moses, Josiah, Jeremiah, Peter, Paul did? 
What Savonarola, John Knox, Wesley 
did? Could so much magnificent God- 
inspired manhood pass before us and 
leave us uninspired? Our poor little lives, 
tossed on seas of temptation and care, 
need some sure and anchoring word. 
Have ye not read what Christ did and 
said? If not, then are ye poor indeed, for 
"The words that I speak unto you," said 
He, "they are Spirit and they are Life." 



©b! tbat tbou baost ftnown tbe tbfngs 
tbat pertain to tbs? welfare. 



THE THINGS THAT MATTER 

What are they — those things that mat- 
ter? For to know them is the true art of 
life. To pursue them earnestly, and them 
alone, is to be safe and calm and glad; it 
is to live in peace and die in hope. Life 
is passing, and death is coming, and the 
time is short, and the things that matter 
we must know. 

Everywhere men are in deadly earn- 
est. Purpose is written plainly upon 
almost every face. Keen eyes look out 
upon you — eyes more keen than kindly — 
as you pass down the busy streets. But 
how much of all that earnestness, purpose 
and vision is directed to the things that 
matter? Did those sharp eyes ever see 
beyond the grave? Did those nimble 
brains ever reckon with the certainties of 
another world, in which the prizes go not 
to the cleverest, but to the best? 

157 



158 Hit tbe 1bour of Silence 

Here surely is the amazing irony of 
life, that far the largest share of men's 
eagerness, strenuousness, enthusiasm, 
vigor, is spent upon the things that do not 
matter. We do not like to confess this 
to our hearts. In the clash of competi- 
tion, when we are tasting the dangers and 
delights of the struggle, and our hearts 
bound at the thought even of a far-off 
victory, we cannot be expected to confess 
that the battle is a foolish one, and the 
victory not worth the gaining. To do 
that would be to paralyze the right arm. 
But to the value of all our struggle and 
purpose we may bring a very simple test: 
what will it do for us at the last? 

Nothing is more certain than that 
death lies at the end of the journey called 
life; that within its solemn shades the 
noise of all our struggle shall cease. And 
every aim to which we sacrifice ourselves 
should be looked at in the light, or the 
darkness — if you will — of that inexorable 
certainty. We are studying to be rich, 
are we? Glad if the years see growing 
gains; and in the struggle we are selling 



Xtbe UhiriQS XCbat ZlDatter 159 

our strength, our peace, and it may be 
our honor. Good. But oh my soul! re- 
member: across the threshold of death 
thou shalt carry neither gold, nor silver, 
nor goodly raiment, nor precious stones. 
"How much did he leave?" asked a friend 
of a rich man who had died. "Every- 
thing/' was the answer. Everything. 

Or are our hearts set on pleasure — 
whether the cruel pleasures that cost so 
dear, that waste our strength, and harden 
our hearts, and drag down womanhood to 
hell, or pleasures that are, if not so guilty, 
yet idle and empty? Not long ago*, on an 
Atlantic liner, there travelled with us a 
theatrical troupe; and there, beneath the 
solemn splendor of the stars, with the 
silvery moonlight shimmering upon the 
rippling waters, they would gather on the 
deck and sing their empty songs. How 
little, methought, they cared for the 
things that matter: and does the public, 
for whom such songs are sung, care more? 
How foolish, how all but blasphemous, 
they rang amid the glories of the night, 
and sky, and sea! and what would they do 



i6o ifn tbe 1bour of Silence 

to prepare a man for that great day 
which neither the singers nor their pub- 
lic shall escape? 

Or are we panting after the phantom 
of popularity? Do our foolish hearts 
flutter with pride, when we are much 
spoken of by men and women whose life 
is but a vapor, and do we scheme to win 
the good opinions of those whose hearts 
are as empty as our own? Ah! what will 
that matter, and what will it do for us, 
when the Judge is seated, and the Books 
are opened? 

At the end of every hope we cherish 
and every scheme on which we spend our 
strength, lie Death and the Judgment. 
They are like great mountain -peaks ; 
which no traveller can miss, who lifts up 
his eyes from the ground, though but for 
a moment. And one glance every day at 
those massive certainties should be 
enough to purify a man's purpose, sober 
his activity, and touch him to sympathy 
with things eternal. For the things which 
really matter now, are the things which 
will matter then. Would any man in his 



XLbc XTbings XTbat /IDatter 161 

senses deliberately pursue a purpose now, 
the memory of which would trouble or 
torment his last conscious hours? Would 
any man who had but the ordinary busi- 
ness capacity for forecasting the future 
and counting the cost, so live that when 
he appears for the final judgment, he 
would long for the mountains to cover 
him and the hills to fall upon him? It is 
possible for us to stand in His presence 
on that day, humble indeed, but unafraid: 
possible, however, only if all our life we 
have been standing in that presence, 
walking in His light, and talking with 
Him by the way, till His Spirit has passed 
into our spirit, and we are altogether con- 
tent with the things that are well pleasing 
in His sight. 

What are they, then, those things that 
matter? We do not name them, for we 
do not need. Every man may discover 
them for himself, if he will but remember 
that he has to appear one day before the 
judgment seat of Christ. Xot merely 
appear — St. Paul means more than that — 
but be manifested, and seen for what he 



162 in tbe 1bour of Stlence 

is. The Judge will see through us — that 
is the meaning of the apostle — and the 
things that matter are the things that we 
may bring into that awful presence una- 
bashed. We must so live now as we 
would wish to have lived then. All else 
matters not. 



In whatsoever state, content 



THE DUTY OF CONTENT 

God doeth all things well. Yet it 
would almost seem as if He made many a 
mistake, to judge by the discontent with 
which some men accept the discipline 
which He allots them. Discontent is a 
more terrible thing than the victim of it 
dreams, for it is the practical denial of 
the love and wisdom of God. It implies 
that God does not know the way by 
which to lead us, and it denies that He 
leads us in love. It is, in essence, rebel- 
lion; and whether it be the greater griefs 
of life or the pettier vexations of every 
day that bring the murmurs to our too 
ready lips, we deny in our hearts, though 
we may confess with our lips, that God is 
our Father and that He doeth all things 
well. 

There is indeed a discontent which is 
itself a gift of God — that noble discontent 

165 



166 1Fn tbe 1bour of Silence 

with the coldness of our response to the 
manifold entreaties of God's good spirit, 
and with the feebleness of our fight 
against the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
If that be more than a passing gust of 
self-reproach, it may be welcomed as the 
flutter of a new life. There is, too, a dis- 
content with the subtle injustices of soci- 
ety, which may impel us to a more brave 
and energetic service. But discontent 
with the lines in which our lot is cast — 
that is only possible to one who thinks 
more highly of himself than he ought to 
think. It is the offspring of an inner 
conceit, which leads a man to claim what 
he does not deserve. For what does any 
man deserve? When he looks out upon 
the severity of the great laws which he 
has offended, and in upon the checkered 
motives that stain the best of all he 
does, he can only confess that he is 
unworthy of the least of the mercies that 
crowd his days. Discontent is the other 
side of presumption. We have no right 
to anything but opportunity. That we 
need; without that we cannot grow. But 



Ube Buts of Content 167 

that we all have in abundance. Every 

day is richly sown with opportunity — the 
more real the vexation, the greater the 
opportunity to grow patient and strong. 
And it is on these things that the strenu- 
ous soul should be set. Strength is devel- 
oped only by strain, and men are made 
perfect through suffering. It is not 
always those who are clothed in purple 
and fine linen that are most fit for the 
kingdom of God, but rather those who 
have to bear some cross and endure some 
shame or sorrow. 

It becomes us, therefore, to be thank- 
ful not only for what we enjoy, but still 
more for what we suffer. For as there is 
no advantage without its temptation, 
neither is there any vexation, pain or sor- 
row, that does not hide some blessing. 
The great grief that breaks the heart 
might lead us, if we would let it, to set 
our affections upon a world where sorrow 
is no more. The disappointment which 
cuts long cherished plans in sunder, the 
pettier cares on which, little by little, we 
fret our hearts away, might lead us, if we 



168 fin tbe 1bour of Silence 

understood them, into a growing inde- 
pendence of the things that are without 
us, and teach us to seek our happiness 
within. We need more of the temper of 
the lame man who used to thank God 
daily for what the world would have 
called his misfortune; "for, had I not 
been lame," he would say, "I would likely 
have run away from God." There are 
natures which can suck the honey out 
of every flower — which can rejoice in the 
sunshine and be glad in the rain; and 
blessed are they who see the divine possi- 
bilities that God has planted within the 
events of their daily discipline, and most 
of all in that w r hich is stern and sore. 

It is there that the real treasures lie — 
the treasures which neither moth nor rust 
can corrupt — there, and not in the mate- 
rial things on which so many spend their 
money and their strength. Of those 
things some one has said that, when the 
longing for them rises in our hearts, we 
should ask, not whether we need them, 
but whether we can dispense with them. 
That is only partly true. Life is not nee- 



Ube H>ut£ of Content 169 

essarily any the fairer when it is stripped 
of all that money can buy. 

"Even in a palace life may be led well." 

But though it is true that the noble life 
may use those things nobly, it does not need 
them. The fairest life among the sons of 
men was lived by One who had not where 
to lay His head. After ajl; is not all that 
is really great, deep, and essential in life, 
within the reach of everybody: the won- 
ders of the sky above us, the wise 
words of all the ages, the inspiration of a 
rooted friendship, the dear joys of home, 
the romance of love, the instinct of wor- 
ship, the memory of happy days, the 
means of grace and the hope of glory? 

And the greatest of all is this, that in 
whatsoever state we are, there is the 
ever-present opportunity to do the will of 
God; and shall we not therewith be con- 
tent? The sunshine that plays on many a 
face that has looked long on sorrow, 
streams from the consciousness of an in- 
violable union with God, and humble 
adoration of His blessed will. Have we 



i;o 1Tn tbe 1bour of Silence 

not often been put to shame — we who 
have all that we need and infinitely more 
than we deserve — by the sight of the 
peace that has transfigured the face of 
some poor suffering one, doomed never 
again to see more of God's world than 
she could see from the window of the 
room where, for weary years, she has 
been lying in pain? She sees the heavens 
opened, and she is content. The deepest 
joys that the soul can know come to him 
who is content to do the Father's will, 
even when that means weariness and 
hope deferred. 

"Out of the woods my Master came, 
Content with death and shame. M 

Such was the Master, and such must 
be all who love Him. 

Content: "For He hath said, 'I will 
not fail thee, nor forsake thee.' ' He 
who cannot lie, He to whom belongeth 
the earth and the fulness thereof, He 
whose are the issues of life and death, He 
whose power is as wide as His pity, He 
hath said, with a reassurance that thrills 



Tlhe H>ut£ of Content 171 

with divine passion, as if He could not too 
earnestly persuade the doubting hearts of 
men, 

"I will in no wise fail thee, 
Neither will I in any wise forsake thee." 

So we cannot be where He is not. In 
every disappointment we may have the 
companionship of the most high God. In 
all the anxiety with which our hearts throb 
as we think of dark and difficult days to 
come, we may take to ourselves the 
assurance that there is a Father in 
Heaven who cares, and whose love will 
never depart. And shall we not let that 
sublime assurance from the mouth of God 
Himself, lift us above all fretting and dis- 
content into that peace which the world 
cannot take away? 



Hfterwaro Ubou wilt recdve me to 

QlOVQ. 



THE GREAT ELSEWHERE 

Christ promised Himself much from 
the hereafter. He knew that the cross 
was the end of His earthly ministry. Yet 
He was calm amid treachery and cruelty; 
for He knew that that cross was not the 
end. Beyond it lay the heavenly glory. 
Behold Him! Rejected, despised, de- 
feated, alone, but with soul unshaken: for 
the future was His. Beyond the horror 
of the thick darkness He saw i; the Son of 
Man coming in the clouds with great 
power and glory." 

So to every soul that is sure of God, 
defeat is but the prelude to power and 
glory. 

"My feet were almost gone," sang one, 

"My steps had well nigh slipped." 

His heart was vexed and embittered by 
the dark riddle of life; till it came upon 
him with a flash, in one of those deep 

175 



176 f n tbe t)our of Silence 

moments that come to all men who wait 
for them, that God was his, and he was 
God's forever. His fears melted before 
the presence of the God who was contin- 
ually with him, and before the vision of 
the glory that would follow when He took 
him. 

"Nevertheless, I am continually with Thee, 
According to Thy purpose Thou wilt guide me, 
And afterward receive me to glory." 

Probably as many hearts are broken 
by defeat as by sorrow; and for the one, 
as for the other, a new day dawns as soon 
as a glimpse is caught of that larger life 
which awaits us in the great elsewhere. 
Life is full of unheeded tragedy. Many 
a man has been visited by dreams of 
great service. He has kept his secret to 
himself; but he knew that, if he had the 
chance, he had the power. He has felt 
within him the throb of a high purpose. 
His soul has been stirred by that divine 
unrest which urges all resolute natures to 
press on to the things which are before. 
He has only waited for his opportunity — 



Xlbe Great JElsewbere 177 

waited for weary years; and the oppor- 
tunity never came. 

Opportunities, they tell us, are always 
coming; it is for us to open our eyes and 
stretch out our hands and grasp them. 
Xo doubt in one sense everyday is a long 
procession of opportunities, The man of 
resolution and vision knows how to trans- 
mute all the baser metals of his common 
life into gold; and his life will be the 
richer for all that it touches. Yet the 
opportunity for which he has hoped and 
wrestled, that turn of affairs which would, 
he thinks, have given him his place and 
power among men, never came. The 
dream remained a dream; and the man 
walks his way through the lonely years 
with a dull pain at the heart of him. 
Unless sorrow has chastened him, he 
wonders, in his bitterer moods, why it 
should be so. 

How many lives, bursting with energy 
and hope, have suppressed themselves 
for the sake of other lives which w r ere 
dearer to them than their own, or have 
been suppressed by the stroke of poverty 



178 fln tbe 1bour of Silence 

or disease! One who had it in him to be 
a philosopher, an artist, a poet, is known 
as the village shoemaker. Perhaps his 
father was poor. Perhaps his parents 
were dead, and the care of his brothers 
and sisters fell on him, and blotted out 
his earthly chances. And so he never 
learned to translate his beautiful dream 
into language which might have helped 
or thrilled another. Or was he a man of 
rich, fine culture and sickness shut him 
out of the great world in which he had 
hoped to use with joy the power that had 
come to him in strenuous hours of prep- 
aration? He scented the battle afar off, 
and he is doomed in loneliness to listen to 
the clash of other men's arms. Or was it 
some girl, who longed to serve her Lord 
in a foreign land? But her parents said 
no! and her heart is sore. 

Why did God make us with those high 
hopes? Why do we see those visions and 
dream those dreams? Why do Ave thrill 
with those impulses to wider action, if the 
end is to be pain, defeat, and death? Is 
it not because afterwards He means to 



Ube <3reat Elsewbere 179 

receive us to glory? A great German 
preacher tells of a farmers son who had 
a genius for engineering. His father kept 
him on the farm and would not let him 
study. "But is it not a grievous pity," 
some one said, "that such a talent should 
be lost?" "Lost!" said the father, "he will 
use it in heaven." 

Yes, the best is yet to be. Our hopes 
are not baulked for nothing. Our de- 
feated ambitions and unrealized yearn- 
ings can do more than teach us submission. 
They can wake in us thoughts of a larger 
life and a more generous world, where 
the powers with which God gifted us can 
be used without impediment, and the 
opportunity for which we waited, will 
come. The God who made the dream 
will fulfil it, if not here, then otherwhere. 
For He abideth faithful. He cannot 
deny Himself. 

But is not Heaven rest? says some 
weary one. Yes; the rest of joyous un- 
impeded service, the rest of those who 
serve Him day and night, the rest of those 
who run and are not weary, who walk 



180 in tbe t>our of Silence 

and are not faint. The soul which has 
been crowded out of her proper place by 
ruthless circumstance or angry competi- 
tion, will breathe freely in that ampler 
air. There will be no jostling on the 
streets of the city of God. In company 
with the great multitude which has tasted 
the sorrow of defeat, we shall walk about 
the fields of light. What here we have 
yearned for, there we shall enjoy. What 
here we have dreamed, there we shall 
dare and do, in endless unconstrained 
service, advancing from knowledge to 
knowledge, and from glory to glory. 



Ubou art mfnoful of bim, ano Ubou 
vtsitest bim. 



MINDFUL OF HIM 

"Thou art mindful of him, and Thou vis- 
itest him." It may have been a shepherd 
that uttered the wonder of his heart in 
these words, as night after night he 
watched the splendors of the sky which 
the fingers of his God had framed, and 
was led by them to thoughts of the all but 
immeasurable distance that severed his 
God from himself. He was so little, and 
God and His heavens were so great. 
Could such an one as God care for such 
an one as he? 

One night the sense of his insignifi- 
cance in the light of the transcendent 
glory that blazed above him, yielded, as 
at a touch of the Almighty hand, to a 
strange uplifting gladness that he was 
greater than those heavens above him; 
for he could look up and call their maker 
Lord, while they could only offer Him 

183 



184 1Fn tbe Dour of Silence 

their silent and unconscious homage. He 
was a worshipper; they were but wit- 
nesses. They witnessed, because they 
must; he worshipped, because he would. 
By virtue of his mysterious nature he 
was at once servant and lord; possessed 
of a will whose glory was to bow in rever- 
ent adoration before Him whose name 
was excellent in all the earth, and yet 
whose duty and destiny was to bend to its 
behests all the works of God's hands. 
With awe it came upon him that there 
was in him something of the divine 
nature. He saw in himself the image and 
reflection of God, whose glory flames 
from sun and star. He could enter into 
fellowship with their Creator; he could 
say, as they could not, "Oh, Jehovah, our 
Lord/' And God had put all things 
under his feet. He was lord, as God was 
Lord. 

But is man lord? The largeness of the 
Psalmist's faith in man is fully justified 
only by the perfect humanity of Christ. 
He is Lord, and beside Him there is none 
else. Every year is confirming in ways 



/HMn&ful of t)fm 185 

that are all but fabulous, mans lordship 
over things material; over the sheep and 
oxen, fowl and fish, land and sea. Even 
the lightning obeys him, and the stars 
reveal to him their secrets. Yet there is 
a realm he has yet to win; he is not 
master of himself. 

We look back upon centuries of com- 
parative moral failure; upon arid specula- 
tions, which have not made man more 
upright, or God more probable, or more 
lovely, upon religions which have car- 
ried in their train massacre, torture, 
idolatry, and immorality. History, every 
human life, proclaims sadly enough that 
man is not lord, but the veriest slave — 
slave of passion, habit, tradition. 

But among the sons of men there has 
been, nay, there is, one Lord, even Jesus. 
Not among the sheep and oxen do we see 
any lordship worthy of the name. We 
have to lift up our eyes to 

"That bright place beyond the skies 
Where Thou, eternal Light of Light, 
Art Lord of all." 

It is no man but Jesus, not even the 



186 Hn tbe Ibour of Silence 

Jesus who walked on earth, but the risen 
Christ who said: "All authority hath 
been given unto me in heaven and on 
earth" — all sheep and oxen, beasts and 
birds and fish, yea, and the immortal 
souls of men. "Now we see not yet all 
things subjected to Him. But we behold 
Jesus crowned with glory and honor." 
The psalm is an unconscious prophecy of 
Christ, who alone enjoys perfect undis- 
puted sovereignty, and who alone can 
restore to man the dominion he has for- 
feited through sin. "All things are ours," 
not of right, but because "we are Christ's, 
and Christ is God's." 

Only Christ the Lord can make us 
truly lords, and lift us into fellowship 
with that God whose nature we were 
born to share. Through Him we enter 
into the secret of God, and learn that His 
nature and His name is love. In Him we 
see a thousandfold more plainly than the 
midnight stars could suggest to us that 
"Thou art mindful of man and Thou 
visitest him," for it was in Christ that He 
did in very truth visit us and show us 



/IDinDCul of turn 187 

His pitiful heart and His mindfulness 
of us. 

And when this precious gift came down 
from heaven upon our weary earth, we 
can almost fancy we hear the shepherds, 
who were abiding in the field, and keep- 
ing watch over their flock by night, re- 
sponding to the angelic song in the words 
of that older shepherd, 

"Oh Jehovah, our Lord, 
How excellent is Thy name in all the earth. 
For what is man, that Thou art mindful of 

him? 
Arid the son of man, that Thou visitest him 
With the gift of Thy well beloved Son?" 



©b! ms people, remember. 



THE PLACE OF MEMORY 

"A man with a bad memory," said 

Richard Rothe, "is literally a poor man." 

Does not this utterance find only too sad 

an echo within all our hearts? At no time 

are we complete masters of the resources 

that once were ours. We have forgotten 

as much as we have learned, perhaps more. 

We search in vain for a fact which was 

once familiar, and it may lie forgotten 

till that great day when all things will be 

brought to our remembrance. What 

would we not give to recall a line of the 

song our mother sang a hundred times, 

or to live over again the joy with which 

we listened to a forgotten story in the 

long ago? We made no effort to hold 

these things. They have slipped through 

the too loose meshes of the memory, and 

we are the poorer for their passing. We 

look across our experience of the years, 

191 



192 1Fn tbe Ifoour of Silence 

and much that should be in blossom is 
waste. Our garden has become a wilder- 
ness. 

The loss of the facts which once in- 
structed or the emotions which once 
thrilled us, is tragic enough; but it is as 
nothing to the vanishing of those experi- 
ences through which, in days gone by, 
God laid His hand upon our soul. Some- 
times He visited us in the summer peace 
of the woods or the mountains. Some- 
times He came when our life lay bleeding 
and torn in the battle of the city. But 
whether here or there, there have been 
times when we were sure that the great 
Presence was very near; and he who can 
forget these times is poor indeed. Again 
and again we have had to pause and look 
at the strange writing on our life's page. 
Again and again we have had to say, 
"This is the finger of God." But the awe 
that was upon us as we gazed has long 
since gone away, and left us the dull 
creatures of the daily round, with eyes 
that are now blind, and hearts that are 
hardened to the divine goodness of which 



Zhc place of /iDemors 193 

our past contains so many a flaming sym- 
bol. Well might an ancient psalmist plead, 

"Oh that ye would hearken to His voice to-day! 
Harden not your heart, as in the wilderness.'' 

The past was ringing with voices for 
those who had ears to hear — voices of 
tender pity, and voices of the sternest 
warning. The bones of a rebellious gen- 
eration had bleached the wilderness. But 
there were hearts then, as there are to- 
day, which not even so tragic a memory 
could discipline and humble. 

The Bible presses a continuous appeal 
to remember and forget not. The 
prophets and psalmists knew how much 
depended upon a good memory, how full 
the past was of inspiration and of warn- 
ing, and how much men needed to look 
and listen. "O my people! remember/' 
pled Micah. Human nature is ever the 
same, and the prophetic appeal to remem- 
ber can never be out of date. Our bad 
memory explains many a lapse in the 
Christian life. If we had forgotten less, 
we should have served more and better. 



i94 Un tbe Ibour of Silence 

But, with strangely fatal ease, men can 
forget alike their terrors and their deliv- 
erances. 

Sit down then in some quiet hour, and 
think of all His benefits. Once you were 
hemmed round with great perplexity. 
There was distress on every side. The 
darkness was about you, and you knew 
not which way to turn. Some gaunt figure 
blocked your way, — sickness, sorrow, pov- 
erty, defeat. And you yearned and you 
prayed in mute anguish that, if God would 
deliver you from your distress, create for 
you a new opportunity, and bring you out 
into a broad place, you would serve Him 
with earnest and grateful love all your 
days. And your prayer was heard. The 
clouds lifted. The way was clear, and 
you are walking on that way to-day with 
ease and pleasure. But is your service as 
pure and zealous as you had vowed in the 
hour of your distress that it should be? 
Have the old terror and the old gladness 
ever shaken your soul again? Have you 
remembered, or have you forgotten? 

Think again. Once you were assailed 



Ube place of ZlDemor^ 195 

with fierce temptation. It was more than 
half your fault that you were where you 
could he tempted. You did not pray for 
power to resist. Did you, in your heart of 
hearts, even wish to resist ? At any rate, 
you fell, and then the whole horror of it 
flashed upon you. How paltry was the 
gain, and how tragic the loss! And you 
lifted up your face with shame to heaven, 
and sobbed out the prayer, "Bless me, even 
me also, my Father/' You believed sin- 
cerely enough that that moment would 
humble you forever in your own sight. But 
you have taken care to keep the memory 
of it far from you. It is the unclean thing 
which you have skilfully buried out of 
sight. But, oh! my brother, remember. 
Do not be afraid to recall the hour of 
your shame. It will teach you again your 
unutterable weakness and your unutter- 
able need of God. It will bring home to 
you again the exceeding sinfulness of sin. 
It will cause you to judge your fellows 
with charity, and to walk with humility 
before your God. 

The memory must be cultivated, or the 



196 ITn tbe Ifoour of Silence 

progress will be slow indeed. We dare 
not forget all His benefits. We cannot 
forget any of His benefits without being 
so much the poorer. The more we for- 
get, the more we lose in power and 
enthusiasm. Every man has in the yes- 
terday of his life some sacred spot at 
which he can rekindle his faith and grati- 
tude, if only he revisits it. We cannot do 
without our past. It is full of stimulus 
and warning. It is fitted both to encour- 
age our faith and to lead us to repent- 
ance. When Peter remembered the 
words of the Lord, he wept bitterly; for 
memory can lead to contrition, and con- 
trition to renewal. But if we stifle the 
memory of those words which God has 
spoken to us in moments of temptation, 
danger, or trial, we commit the dead- 
liest crime against our own soul; for we 
harden our hearts and close upon our- 
selves the open doors of heaven. 

And yet we are so made that we can- 
not altogether forget. Sometimes the 
past looks in upon us. It does not forget 
us, though we forget it. The thing we 



Ube place of /iDemon? 197 

had forgotten flashes across the years like 
lightning, and illumines for one lurid 
moment the hardness and ingratitude of 
our hearts. In that light let us look at 
ourselves, for God is giving us another 
chance to consider and repent. But, if 
we do not encourage the past to visit and 
instruct us, it will visit us when it is too 
late, and when its presence can only mock 
and terrify, for we read of one who lifted 
up his eyes in torment, and prayed but 
for a drop of water, and across the great 
gulf fixed came the awful answer, "Son, 
remember!" 



3Bebol&! 11 stanfc at tbe boot, an& 
fenocfe. 



THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR 

No man can be very far from the 
Saviour. He is either in my house or 
standing before my door. If He is not 
yet my guest, He yearns to be; and 
between Him and me there can be no 
more than a door, though that door may 
be bolted and barred. "Behold!" He 
says; and over the mystery that follows 
this arresting word, let me not too lightly 
hasten. "Behold! I stand at the door and 
knock." Oh miracle of inhospitality! 
That I should sit, careless and comfort- 
able, within my house, and have no ears 
for the knocking or that Stranger without 
the door. 

This tender message was first spoken 
to a luke-warm church, which thought she 
was wise and wealthy and had need of 
nothing. But one thing she needed 
sorely, even the Saviour whom she kept 

201 



202 Hn tbe t>out of Silence 

standing at the door. Any church which 
would think to dispense with Him, must 
indeed be "wretched and miserable and 
poor and blind," and she may have to be 
woke up from the slumber that glides into 
death by a loud knock at her inhospitable 
doors. For the Stranger of whose rights 
she is so careless, loves her with all the 
passion of His Saviour heart, and He will 
try to knock so that she will not fail to 
hear. A solemn knock it may be, as a 
stroke of pain or sorrow; for "as many as 
I love, I reprove and chasten." That is 
how He often knocks at doors which do 
not gladly open to His coming. 

And as with the church, so with the 
man. Prosperous and lazily content with 
the warm but delusive comfort within, we 
close our doors against that gracious 
Wayfarer, whose delight is to dwell 
among men and to find a home among 
those whom He is not ashamed to call 
His brethren. He cannot pass us by. 
His heart is too full. Our closed door 
may grieve His love, but it cannot par- 
alyze it. He longs to be within. He be- 



Zbc Stranger at tbe H)oor 203 

lieves — such is His faith in man — that if 
He knocks, it will be opened unto Him. 
So He knocks as on earth He may have 
knocked, when the night came on, at 
the door of some fisherman's house on 
the shores of that memorable sea where 
many of His mighty works were done. 
He knocks and waits and listens with 
beating heart, to see if we will let Him in. 

But if He loves me so, why does He 
not lift the latch and come in? Ah! per- 
haps He cannot. Perhaps I have barred 
out such as He. And besides, this is a 
door which can be opened only from 
within. If I do not open it, He cannot; 
and so gentle a Stranger will not force 
the door. The perilous privilege of hos- 
pitality is mine. It is mine to welcome or 
reject the kingliest Stranger that ever 
came to human door. 

And if His knock be unrecognized 
or unheard amid the household noise 
within, surely I will know His voice; for 
He knows that only the door hides me 
from Him, and He speaks as well as 
knocks; for He believes that I can be 



204 1fn tbe 1bour of Silence 

touched by the pity and the love that 
melt in the tones of His dear voice. "It 
is I, n He tells me, half pleadingly, half 
reassuringly, "and if any man hear my 
voice, and open the door, I will come in 
to him and sup with him, and he with 
me." Can it be that any man would not 
listen to such a voice, and open his door 
with gladness? He longs, He pleads for 
a place at my table. Is it true? "I with 
Him, and He with me," This humble- 
ness, this brotherliness, rebuke me, amaze 
me. Then with a flash the whole scene 
is transformed, and I see it with other 
eyes. "He with me," says Christ. So 
after all, He is host, and I am guest. It 
is He who prepareth the table and it is of 
His good things that I partake. 

To the man who loves the Lord, life 
might be one long festival with Christ. 
No man need sup in loneliness. The 
Master is willing to share all with him, 
though it be in an upper room; but only 
if he open the door and let Him in. It 
is for us to have the open ear, to learn 
and understand the many ways in which 



XTbe Stranger at tbe H>oor 205 

Christ knocks and speaks to men. Every 
stroke that falls upon our health or for- 
tune, every breach that death makes 
among our friendships, is as another 
knock of the Christ who is yearning to 
enter our life, to possess, redeem and 
transfigure. But He can gently speak as 
well as loudly knock; and happy is the 
man who has ears to hear. In every 
gracious thought that visits us, in every 
yearning after better things, in every 
solemn resolution for the days to come, 
in every tender memory of days gone by, 
Christ is standing before our door saying 
"It is I." Christmastide is one brief, ten- 
der, manifold appeal. You cannot escape 
it. It speaks to you from the glad 
eyes of the children. It whispers from 
the glittering heavily laden trees in many 
a home and church. It throbs in the gift 
that friend sends friend. It rings in the 
carols on the streets and in the churches. 
The air is charged with a thousand 
gracious memories. What is it all but 
the audible voice of Christ? He is stand- 
ing at my door and knocking. 



206 irn tbe 1bout of Silence 

Lord, I hear Thy voice; come in and 
sup with me, and abide with me evermore 
— Thou with me and I with Thee. 



©ne step enougb for me. 



ONE STEP ENOUGH 

Our times are in His hand: to-morrow 
no less than to-day, to-day no less than 
to-morrow. It were unworthy, then, to 
look across the coming year with fear or 
hesitation, as if its unknown ways had to 
be trodden alone, as if there were no 
Father to care for us, or Saviour to plead 
for us, or Spirit to comfort us. 

But we love best to walk by sight, and 

not by faith. We would not be treated 

as a child, and guided where we go. We 

would rather plan our way, and strain our 

eyes towards the far distances — those 

foolish eyes which cannot see even the 

nearest bend of the road. We set out for 

Damascus with letters from the high 

priest; but we are struck down, and the 

letters are never delivered. We are 

rudely stopped in our way, like the 

Cyrenian, and compelled, with the cross 

209 



210 f n tbe t)our of Silence 

of Christ upon our shoulders, to march 
with Him towards Calvary. We cannot 
see a step of our way. Clouds and thick 
darkness are about it. What can we do 
but trust? If we cannot trust, then we 
shall have to fret and scheme; and it will 
be all over with our peace, to say nothing 
of our joy. 

But if we would reassure our restless 
hearts that our future is in the hands of 
God, we have but to scan our past. Can 
any man that is not altogether blind look 
over the way he has traversed without 
surprise and awe, as he sees it marked 
everywhere by mysterious foot-prints 
other than his own — even the foot-prints 
of the living God? We thought we were 
going a way of our own; and all the time 
we have been on the Kings highway. 
Another has been walking with us, 
though our eyes were holden and we saw 
Him not, and many a time He has turned 
our steps to the right hand or to the left, 
into His way which was not our way. 
How strange seem our early dreams and 
purposes in the light of life's later story. 



@ne Step Enougb 211 

The longest way must be traversed a 
step at a time, and if we faint at the 
thought of life's long, and maybe perilous 
way, may we not at any rate brace our 
faith to take the single step which here 
and now is needed? The way is dark: 
but the darkness and the light are both 
alike to Him. There is solid ground 
beneath our feet. He hath beset us 
behind. Will He not also beset us before? 
Commit thy way, then, unto the Lord. 
With the grand imperiousness of love, 
Christ continually presses upon us the 
large and awful claims of the future; but 
He presses no less earnestly upon us the 
necessity of quietly and confidently trust- 
ing the Father's goodness from day to 
day. We are to take no anxious thought 
for the morrow, which we may never see. 
It is for each day's bread that we are 
taught to pray. And the greatest hymn 
of the Christian church teaches us to lift 
our hearts to God with the prayer: 
"Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day 
without sin." 

If we could wake with the thought that 



212 ifn tbe 1bour of Silence 

this new-born day is as divine as any day 
ever was or can be, with what quiet joy 
would we move on to all its duties and 
cares! The cares and duties that lie 
beyond the coming night will be illumined 
by the kindly light of another day. Each 
new day will be another day with God, 
and so we can abide any issue with 
patience and with hope: for the issues are 
with Him. 

"I do not ask to see the distant scene, 
One step enough for me." 

The mist may be heavy that lies upon 
the landscape; but the way we know. 
Christ has made that plain enough to the 
willing heart. It is the way of obedience 
to the Father's blessed will. Therefore 
we will step fearlessly forward through 
every night of doubt and care and sor- 
row, in the sure hope of an everlasting 
day. Our earthly days are but as steps 

"That slope thro' darkness up to God." 



OCT 141903 



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